It was recently announced that the Swedish regulatory authority (PTS) has excluded ZTE and Huawei from the auction of the 5G network in Sweden due to security concerns. Now the auction has been postponed.
Ban overridden
It has now been announced that the planned auction for the 5G network in Sweden has been suspended. Huawei had resisted the exclusion by the regulatory authority and applied for an injunction. As a result, the Administrative Court has now overruled the authority’s ban until further notice. The network operators Telenor and Tele2 are just in time for the postponement; they had already requested the regulatory authority to postpone the auction. The Administrative Court in Stockholm has further decided that certain parts of PTS’ decisions will not apply for the time being. The court has also ruled that Huawei may file a lawsuit. This was initially rejected by the Swedish government because Huawei had no legitimate interest. However, the legitimate interest now exists because the group is allowed to participate in the auction, according to the decision of the Administrative Court. In addition, it was also examined whether the arguments of Huawei are promising. Of course this is not yet a win for the group. Judge Johan Lundmark stated: “The Administrative Court has come to the conclusion that Huawei has the right to appeal against the PTS decision”.
The auction and the PTS
In the original terms of allocation issued by the regulatory authority PTS, it was stipulated that network operators would have to waive the use of the Chinese manufacturers Huawei and ZTE with the terms of use for the auctioned frequencies. To this end, the existing Chinese hardware is to be completely replaced by 2025. This applies to all companies wishing to participate in the auction. All these conditions were drawn up by the authority in cooperation with the armed forces and the Swedish Security Service. According to the statement, they are solely intended to ensure Swedish security. The planned auction should deal with the 3.5 GHz and 2.3 GHz bands. Up to 15 nationwide licences in the 3.5 GHz band were to be auctioned off. One licence will be allocated 40 MHz frequencies. The other 14 will only have 20 MHz. The minimum bid is SEK 100 million (EUR 9.4 million). All in all, the total bid is SEK 1.5 billion, or EUR 140.3 million. It is not yet known when the auction will finally take place.
