The Stockholm Administrative Court on Tuesday upheld the decision of Swedish telecom regulator, the Post and Telecom Authority (PTS) that has banned 5G products and sales of Chinese telecom product Huawei citing security concerns.
The Swedish telecom regulator PTS earlier banned Huawei and its Chinese counterpart Telecommunication equipment Corporation (ZTE), in October last year when the Swedish Intelligence agency raised concern over installations of 5G supporting infrastructure by ZTE.
PTS is responsible for formulating the auctions for the development of the 5G network in the country. In order to carry out its obligation in its terms, it clearly mentioned that the new installations can’t be carried out of Huawei products.
However, Huawei appealed the PTS decision before the Stockholm administrative court in November and submitted that this unilateral decision is arbitrary and plead for removing of this decision. The Stockholm court granted Huawei a partial injunction as PTS decision may harm them financially and also loss of their goodwill. But PTS again appealed this decision before the Court of Appeal where the Court while revoking the injunction order held that PTS can continue to apply its condition of keeping out Chinese giant from expansion and infrastructure development of 5G network in the country.
As the court of Appeal already delivered its verdict on the future of Chinese telecom giant Huawei and Chinese telecom regulator ZTE, the Chinese has still option to appeal before the Court of Appeal. With this move, Chinese companies’ headache is going to increase in the near future as there is very possible that it has to face similar problems in other European countries where the 5G installing process is going on.
By- Rajnish ( Chanakya National Law University, Patna)
