ZURICH (Reuters) -Switzerland’s highest court has rejected Swisscom’s appeal over the standards it has to use in expanding fibre-optic networks to consumers, the court said on Tuesday.
The case centred on whether Swisscom could use a different standard than the one telecoms companies had agreed to in a roundtable with regulators.
The Federal Administrative Court had ruled against Swisscom last year, and the Federal Supreme Court upheld that ruling in a verdict released on Tuesday.
“The Federal Supreme Court rejects Swisscom’s appeal in connection with the precautionary measure imposed by the Competition Commission (WEKO) for the expansion of the fibre-optic network. The decision of the Federal Administrative Court, in which it confirmed the provisional WEKO ban, is not arbitrary,” the court said in a statement accompanying the verdict.
The Competition Commission had provisionally prohibited Swisscom from pursuing its network expansion until the commission had concluded an investigation, a decision that Swisscom had appealed against last year.
In a statement following the verdict, Swisscom said it acknowledges the judgement.
“To counteract the stalled optical fibre expansion resulting from the proceedings, Swisscom decided in October 2022 to rely largely on the point-to-point topology permitted by WEKO,” the company said.
(Reporting by Michael Shields and Noele Illien; Editing by Jane Merriman and Richard Chang)