German Chancellor Angela Merkel gestures while she delivers a special address at the 50th World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland January 23, 2020. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse
DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) – Diversification is crucial to ensuring a country’s security in the rollout of 5G mobile technology and shunning one supplier completely risks being counter productive, German Chancellor Angela said on Thursday.
Merkel’s government has been wrangling for weeks over how strict security requirements for Germany’s 5G rollout should be, and whether they should effectively shut out Chinese technology giant Huawei [HWT.UL] from the network.
Without naming Huawei, Merkel said of the 5G conundrum: “How do I make myself secure? I think I make myself the most secure through diversification and redundancy where it is necessary, those are the technical approaches to secure myself.
“I don’t think I make myself particularly secure if I completely eliminate providers in their entirety and then don’t know how they develop – I am sceptical about that,” she added.
Writing by Paul Carrel, editing by Thomas Escritt