![]() |
FILE PHOTO: Ericsson Chief Executive Officer Borje Ekholm holds a news conference during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona |
The head of Swedish telecoms giant Ericsson, Börje Ekholm, is worried about Chinese reprisals after Sweden banned Huawei from taking part in the rollout of 5G networks, he said Monday.
The Swedish Post and Telecom Authority (PTS) announced it
was excluding Huawei and ZTE, both from China, from its 5G frequency auction in
late October, citing security concerns.
Equipment already installed from the Chinese manufacturers
must be removed by January 1, 2025.
"I hope there will be no impact," Ekholm told
daily Dagens Nyheter in an interview.
"China accounts for eight percent of our revenue. For
us it has been a strategically important issue to be present in China,"
Ekholm added.
Over the weekend, the newspaper published text messages
between Ekholm and Swedish Trade Minister Anna Hallberg in which he asked the
government to "talk" with the telecoms regulator.
"At the moment Sweden is a really bad country for
Ericsson," Ekholm complained to the minister.
The PTS decision "excludes our Chinese competitors in a
way that no other EU country has done", he said in SMS messages obtained
by the daily.
After the UK in mid-July, Sweden became the second European
country and the first in the European Union to explicitly ban Huawei from
almost all the infrastructure needed to run its 5G network.
Huawei has taken the Swedish regulator to court over its
decision, leading to the 5G auction being delayed, and Beijing has warned that
the authority's decision could have unspecified "consequences" for
Scandinavian companies in China.
In his interview, Ekholm called the Swedish decision "a
complication" for Ericsson, but said he still wanted it to remain Swedish.
"Our soul is in Sweden, it's Ericsson's base. But if
Sweden doesn't support free trade it is a complication for us," he said,
while noting that "we make 99 percent of our turnover outside
Sweden."