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Not sure about Germany but remember when the UK government wanted all Huawei kit removing? The CPS weren't happy about this as they were clearly aware of how much Huawei kit there is out there and how much it would cost to replace and how long the job would take. They explained this to gov.uk who changed TAC slightly by saying only "gigabit capable" kit needed to be replaced.

At that point I was puzzled. There's not much carrier grade network kit around that isn't gigabit capable. You're not getting far without backhaul at gigabit and above. However the government had an answer for that. They meant kit that delivers gigabit services to end user. Which of course lets most of the Openreach off the hook for all those street cabs that happen to be Huawei AIO kit. Most of them might only support subscriber connections at up to 80Mbps, but the cab as a whole be be capable of shifting a gigabit/sec or more back to the exchange. Then there are a whole load of ADSL MSANs sitting in exchanges owned and operated by multiple CPs. Again the lines they support might only be up to 24Mbps but their backhaul is going to be a gig or above.

Since full fibre to the premises is still a distant dream for most properties in the UK this means that most of the network will still be passing through Huawei kit. This fact alone shows that this doesn't really have anything to do with security. In what way does the speed of a subscriber connection dictate whether there is a security risk or not?

Unsurprisingly gov.uk have an answer for that too should you be bold enough to answer the question. They claim that we'll all be on gigabit services soon so there's no point replacing the Huawei kit now. Their claim is that all the stuff that's less than gigabit capable will be out of service soon so there's no point rushing to replace it. Except that is grade A prime BS. The government's laughable target to move everybody to high speed fibre broadband by 2025 is not what it seems. In that context "fibre" means fibre to the cabinet - weasel words if ever I heard them. Fibre to the cabinet does not in any way mean high speed. It certainly does not mean gigabit. There is no planned switch off date for those FTTC DSLAMs. Worse still I know of plenty of services where the distance from the cab to the property is over a kilometre and the subscriber is getting speeds no better on VDSL than they were when on ADSL, in some cases worse.

If the government are really concerned about security they would fund a project to remove all the Huawei infrastructure in UK networks. Clearly they are not.

What puzzles me most however is the assumption among many that the only alternative is Cisco, or indeed that the only alternative is American.