After the Australian Government decided to exclude Huawei from bidding for the National Broadband Network (NBN) citing security reasons, similar voices doubting the integrity of the Chinese telco major are being heard in its neighbor, reports ZDNet Australia. 

In a significant development that might spell trouble for Huawei, the New Zealand Labour Party has asked the government to explain Huawei''s involvement with New Zealand's ultra-fast broadband roll-out, it said.

According to ZDNet Australia Huawei has picked up a number of contracts for rolling out fibre across New Zealand as part of the government's NZ$1.5 billion ultra-fast broadband project. The open-access fibre network will cover 75 per cent of the country and will be able to offer Kiwis download speeds of up to 100 megabits per second (Mbps) and upload speeds of 50Mbps. As with Australia's NBN, the roll-out is expected to take 10 years.

Although the contracts were awarded with not much controversy in 2011, in light of the ban in Australia, Labour Party ICT spokesperson Clare Curran has said it raises questions about the security and integrity of New Zealand's own network.

ZDNet Australia quoted Curran as saying ."The government is refusing to explain why it has taken a different decision to the Australian Government when it comes to security matters relating to Huawei's involvement in broadband projects,"

"While the Australian Government has banned Huawei from tendering for any contracts attached to its $36 billion broadband scheme, our Prime Minister blithely says he is 'comfortable with checks done' over the security of the New Zealand network."

Curran said the government was refusing to say whether New Zealand Prime Minister John Key had been briefed by the Australian Government for the reasons behind the ban, and would not offer any guarantees about the security of the New Zealand broadband network.

"Essentially, our government is looking the other way and refusing to take a second look at the contracts that have been given to Huawei despite the intense public interest in this matter."

The country's Greens Party has also asked the NZ parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee to investigate Huawei, according to Yahoo News New Zealand.