Nokia and Ericsson are the other big 5G vendors. I don't know of any problems in their ability to deliver.

Besides both are old companies with solid reputations in two stable democracies.

Ericsson, has big parts of their 5G R&D in Germany I'm sure they have their fair share of government ties.

Tools in this context sounds a lot like:

- I'll have my favored vendor draft the RFB

- Have my favored vendor write the only RFP that matches the RFB

- pretend there is competition.

This is probably the US telling Germany what to do. They're the junior partner anyway. Giving China access to large parts of their telco infrastructure isn't something either country wants to do. I can understand why, but just saying that probably won't fly with the WTO

The reality is slightly different.

https://www.lightreading.com/mobile/5g/huawei-muscle-puts-er...

This is the direction some major Canadian telecoms have been going.

I’m not sure if they’ve all changed their plans, but at least one or two of them have already made this choice and have used them in the past. Never heard of any problems in delivering.

In 4G and 5G networks there are only 4 big network infrastructure companies left: Huawei, Ericsson, Nokia and ZTE. Two of them are Chinese and two are from EU. Samsung is fifth but it has only 3% of the market.