Vested Interest All Over again
First of all there is a significant vested interest by a specific UK comms provider competing with BT for business here.
Second, there is no networking gear on the market free of key Chinese parts.
Third, there is no networking gear manufacturer that does not have people of Chinese origin in their engineering department. From there on it is technicality - gun to temple of dear grandma in Beijing and voila... Backdoor is there...
So if the Chinese wanted to put a kill switch they could have done so for any network kit.
If there is such a switch, then:
1. It is in the network kit of any provider and the brief given to GCHQ by a certain network provider known for its stellar ineptitude and good gov relationships is full of sh*t. Their network is vulnerable as well.
2. The correct way to deal with it is to mitigate against it by providing suitable resilience.
3. Switches require means to throw them. Even if the gear is potentially compromised it can still be used provided that all the means to activate the switch have been put under control.
Oh, and it is the same provider by the way whose vested interests influenced the Broadband review and a few other quangocracy productions relied upon by Nu Labour. Well done.