The German government is preparing a far-reaching exclusion of Chinese network equipment from the country's mobile networks, and the decisive lever is a dull one: a revised catalogue of critical components at the Federal Network Agency (Bundesnetzagentur) that would, for the first time, classify 5G base stations as particularly security-relevant.
A spokesman for the Interior Ministry told Handelsblatt that the security-policy turning point required dependencies and risks in critical infrastructure to be considered comprehensively and re-evaluated. The ministry welcomed the further development of security requirements for telecoms networks and especially for critical components, and framed the coming 6G build-out around avoiding components from possibly untrusted vendors.
Why a base station is not a component like any other
Vendors sell package solutions. A base station, the core network and the management software are not freely mixable; in practice, a Chinese radio unit on the mast pulls Chinese systems engineering behind it. That is why declaring the base station a critical component amounts to a de facto exclusion of Huawei and ZTE rather than a component-level filter. The remaining options are Nokia and Ericsson from Europe and Samsung from South Korea.
This is a different instrument from what was agreed before. In 2024 the federal government and the operators settled on removing Huawei and ZTE components from the core of the 5G network by the end of 2026, and from radio access gear by 2029. The core is the walled-off part of the network; the mast is the part that actually talks to the phone, and it stands across the whole country. Classifying base stations as critical would give regulators a legal lever that does not depend on that self-commitment — and one that can be pointed at 6G procurement before the first contracts are signed.
Almost everything but the direction is unsettled
No decision has been published; the list is still being revised. Unknown: whether the 2026 and 2029 deadlines move forward, whether installed gear gets grandfathering, and how long transition periods run. For the operators the question is a swap at thousands of sites. Deutsche Telekom, Vodafone and Telefónica all use Huawei equipment to varying degrees, Telekom at a large share of its sites, and the cost of ripping it out has been contested for years — the earlier debate, however, was mostly about the core, not the country-wide radio layer.
The timing is telling too. Germany's argument over Chinese network gear has run since 2019 on a familiar loop: security concern, compromise, transition period. Aiming at the base station moves the dispute from the data centre to the antenna — the place where replacement is both most expensive and most visible.
What to watch
First, publication of the revised critical-components list, and whether base stations are genuinely on it and with what justification. Second, whether the 2029 deadline for radio access gear survives or is brought forward. Third, whether operators fight through courts or through renegotiated deadlines. Fourth, whether other EU member states follow: a German solo run would be expensive, a European one far cheaper.
For now there is a direction, not a rule. Anyone claiming Huawei is already banned in Germany is describing an intention, not a legal state.
