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 in a round table 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.
The telecom company has said that it considered the precautionary measures to be misguided.
(Reporting by Michael Shields. Editing by Jane Merriman)
