Last month, Sweden banned national telecom operators from using Huawei and ZTE equipment for
On the Huawei side
Sanctions against Huawei were initiated by armedforces and the Swedish security service, accusing China of “intelligence gathering and technology theft.” Moreover, the authorities prohibited operators from installing new equipment and demanded that they dismantle existing equipment by 2025.
And although Ericsson, like Nokia, is one of Huawei’s main competitors, the head of the company opposed the government’s decision.
“The decision needs to be reconsidered.Both Ericsson and the whole country need this, because we are guided by the principles of free trade. I think it is important to ensure free competition in an open market,” Borje Ekholm emphasized in an interview with the Financial Times.
According to him, the reliability of communication networks is an issuenational security, which will become even more acute in the future. But he believes that Sweden has deviated from EU guidelines on the security of fifth-generation networks, which are designed to balance issues of national security and free competition. “I consider this to be a misinterpretation of reasonable legislation,” Borje Ekholm added.
Moreover, due to sanctions, the auction for the allocation of 5G frequencies was postponed. According to the head of Ericsson, this will slow down the deployment of new telecommunications networks in general.
“I belong to that category of people whobelieve that competition encourages companies to develop in the long term,” said Borje Ekholm. “She encourages us to be more innovative and develop even better products for our customers.”
According to him, European countries, on the contrary,We need to speed up the deployment of 5G networks. “Think about 4G—while Europe was arguing about what a ‘killer app’ was, the Americans and Chinese were rolling out networks,” he said. — Now their companies dominate the application market. The same thing will happen with 5G, only this time it will affect enterprises. Slowing 5G rollout is a risk to the economy. Europe risks being left behind again."
Analysts expect Ericsson todefend the interests of Huawei, since it has a fairly significant share of business in China. In this way, the company will try to protect itself without sharing the official position of Stockholm.
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