Once again Chinese telecom company, Huawei, finds itself banned from conducting business, this time with Swedish telecom regulator PTS. After a long drawn court battle, PTS began its auctions for 5G spectrum networks. Currently only Hi3G Access, Net4Mobility, Telia Sverige and Teracom have been permitted to participate in 3.5 GHz and 2.3 GHz spectrum auctions.
This auction had faced some delay that was caused by a security review and then the lawsuit filed by Huawei against PTS. Earlier PTS had given a time allowance till 1st Jan, 2025 for companies bidding in the auction, to remove all Huawei and ZTE equipment from their infrastructure. This decision was met with some efforts to control damage- Huawei said that it was willing to meet the requirements set by the Swedish government on 5G equipment.
This ban is the third one for Huawei, where Sweden has followed in the footsteps of Britain in banning the Chinese company equipment from its 5G networks, raising concerns that there would be national risks involved. Earlier US DOD under Trump administration had banned Huawei citing that the telecom company was backed by Chinese military.