China’s share of mobile infrastructure? – Government has no idea

In Germany, too, there has been intensive discussion for years as to whether and to what extent technology from China may be used in critical telecommunications infrastructures. But the authorities don’t even know what the status is.

The parliamentary group of the CDU/CSU had in one Small request requested information from the federal government about the proportion of hardware from Chinese providers in the core networks of the various operators. It is precisely here that the risk of sensitive information being tapped is particularly pronounced. Therefore, the network operators announced some time ago that if possible no systems from Huawei and Co. would be used here.

However, it was also a matter of a self-commitment, which the economy likes to make in order to avoid legal requirements. The federal government cannot say anything about whether this is really being observed. “The federal government has no final information on the percentage of components from Chinese and other manufacturers in German mobile and fixed networks,” it said.

The only protection is exclusion

In various other countries, the use of Chinese technology in mobile networks is now clearly prohibited. In this country, however, the operators are withdrawing from making a distinction between the core network and the access network. The information is actually processed in the core network – i.e. metadata is generated and calls are routed. The access network essentially consists of antennas and associated systems, which pose less of a risk of espionage.

Chinese manufacturers have repeatedly denied having backdoors in their systems that could be used to leak information. However, this can hardly be verified. Because in order to keep the systems accessible, no obvious access points have to be inserted, which would be obvious in an open source code. It would suffice to insert a subtle and hardly detectable, apparent programming error that can be exploited with an exploit.

See also:

Mobile communications, Lte, 5G, Deutsche Telekom, Telekom, Vodafone, provider, network expansion, O2, Telefonica, network operator, mobile operator, mobile operator, telecommunications company, mobile network, antenna, transmission mast, radio mast, cell phone mast, cell tower, transmitting station