The Swedish Transport Administration - a faint star in the digitalization sky

This time last year, there was great excitement about the new broadband strategy; the government unveiled ambitious new targets for broadband deployment and also promised to remove barriers to market investment. Today, the latter seems like an empty promise, and the strategy increasingly resembles a paper product. How else are we to interpret the fact that the government is neither dealing with nor removing the now long-known and largest single obstacle to the much-needed broadband expansion, which paradoxically consists of the government's own authority, the Swedish Transport Administration?

The Swedish Transport Administration's long processing times for permits to lay power lines in road and railroad areas have been difficult for broadband construction companies for several years, and the industry's many attempts to draw the attention of both the agency and the government to the problem and its consequences have become something of a serial.

In June this year, the number of cases in the queue at the Swedish Transport Administration was almost 2,000. "Worrying," said the Swedish Transport Administration itself, promising measures that they believed would lead to "noticeable changes in the case queue within 6 months". Today, there are 3,000 permit applications in the queue. A very noticeable change for sure, but not exactly in the desired direction.

Add to that processing times of over five months, ambiguous and highly personalized feedback on applications, and sudden revocation of permits already granted without taking responsibility for the consequences for the broadband builder or its customers.

This is at the same time as broadband expansion is increasingly moving from our urban areas, where municipalities are the main owners of the roads, and out into rural and sparsely populated areas, where the Swedish Transport Administration owns the roads.

All in all, the government's own authority is today paradoxically the biggest bottleneck in the broadband expansion demanded by the government. We are now in a situation where thousands of broadband customers are not receiving promised deliveries, delays in projects and a lack of transparency in the licensing process are consuming resources for broadband expansion. Operators who have received government support for broadband expansion risk being liable for repayment when permits are not processed in time by the Swedish Transport Administration. The investments that the government is dependent on to achieve the broadband goals and which, in a larger perspective, create employment and are crucial to the digitization of Sweden, seriously risk ending up in our neighboring countries where expansion can take place more smoothly.

It is obvious to me, who has met with managers at various levels of the authority repeatedly during the year and who almost daily receives input from concerned member companies about the authority's actions (and non-actions), that the Swedish Transport Administration itself does not see how their actions de facto hinder broadband development. The fact that they also lack insight into both how acute and urgent the situation is, requires that the government now acts and does so forcefully.

As I said last summer: To remove unnecessary obstacles is to clearly point to the Swedish Transport Administration and say: solve the problem and solve it now! Right now, an authority that misguidedly protects the road capital is higher than broadband between the Swedes and digitization. How can the government allow this? It is difficult to get together. And unacceptable.