A month ago, the Swedish Post and Telecom Authority (PTS) announced that all Swedish telecom operators that had participated in 5G spectrum auctions would be prohibited from using 5G equipment provided by Huawei or ZTE. On November 9, local time, the Stockholm Administrative Court temporarily lifted the ban after receiving Huawei’s appeal.
After the disturbance, Ericsson, a communications equipment manufacturer from Sweden, became the focus of public discussion. In this regard, the CEO of Ericsson expressed his attitude on the matter.
Recently, Borje Ekholm, Ericsson’s president and CEO, stated as follows when being interviewed by Chinese media: “The Swedish Post and Telecom Authority’s resolution restricts free and open market access. We think this is adverse. So, we approve Huawei's and operators' effort to question this decision. We believe that a fair decision will be made eventually to ensure an open and fair market. Ericsson will continue to support an open market and fair competition."
Borje Ekholm highly recognized Huawei as its peer. In his eyes, Huawei is not just a close-combat rival: "Huawei is indeed our biggest and strongest competitor, but Huawei and Ericsson also have carried out extensive cooperation in promoting the formulation and development of global communication standards. It is such competition and cooperation that make the users of the same 3GPP standards reach 8 billion worldwide. This kind of competition and cooperation has promoted the evolution of global 5G standards and brought better products to our end users. It also proves the value that companies like Huawei and Ericsson could bring when working together."