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Letter to Minister of Industry Mikael Damberg regarding the government decision that stopped the auction in the 700MHz band

Digital infrastructure Digitization Competition

The government's decision last week to extend TV broadcasts in the 700MHz band and thus stop the Swedish Post and Telecom Agency's planned frequency auction, will have negative consequences for the digitization of Sweden. This has attracted the attention of many, including the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise, which, in agreement with IT&Telecom companies, believes that the decision will slow down the expansion of mobile broadband and thus the digitization of Sweden's rural and sparsely populated areas.

 

A well-developed and future-proof digital infrastructure is crucial for the impact of digitization, a functioning, innovative and competitive business community and continued welfare. And not least to ensure the government's goal of Sweden being the best in the world to take advantage of the opportunities of digitization by 2020.

According to the calculations available to IT&Telekomföretagen, the government's decision means that it will take at least three years before we can be back where we were last week, i.e. in the starting blocks for a spectrum auction. First, MSB will investigate a future blue light network for one year (until November 1, 2017). Then, an important and balanced political decision on how to allocate the frequencies will be taken, which should reasonably take at least six months. This means that we have reached the spring/summer of 2018 when PTS can, depending on the political decision, start setting up for a new auction. According to the authority, this process normally takes one and a half years.

In order to provide the government with a basis for considering the negative consequences of the decision for the digitization of Sweden and the competitiveness of Swedish industry, and to constructively describe how the industry believes that these can now be avoided as far as possible, I would like to take this opportunity to ask for an urgent meeting with the Minister.

Yours sincerely

Ellinor Bjennbacke, Head of Industrial Policy at IT&Telecomföretagen