France’s supreme court (Conseil d'Etat) has rejected a legal case against the law introduced by the government on the security of 5G networks, ruling that the legislation was consistent with the Constitution. Described as the “anti-Huawei law" by the French press, it enforces an authorisation regime with powers to restrict the use of 5G infrastructure equipment on national defence and security grounds. Bouygues Telecom and SFR, which both rely on Huawei for a large proportion of their respective LTE networks, came together to build a legal fight against the regulation.
In mid 2020, Bouygues said that it would be forced to replace 3,000 Huawei-made mobile antennas by 2028. This is because the operator is likely to receive only partial and time-limited approval for 5G upgrades from Huawei under the new system of authorisations.
Bouygues and SFR used the legal case to demand a compensation scheme, arguing that they should not bear costs incurred in replacing existing equipment in their current mobile networks. At a later stage, Iliad subsidiary Free Mobile also joined the legal action brought by its two rivals, reportedly on the basis that it had been denied equal treatment by seeing all its demands to use Huawei equipment rejected.
