ZTE banned from Telenor supplier list

Norwegian carrier Telenor has banned Chinese vendor from all of its equipment tenders for six months for an unspecified breach of the carrier’s code of conduct policy, the firm has said.

“We have suspended ZTE from participating in tenders and new business opportunities for a period of six months ending March 3 next year,” said Telenor spokesman Dag Melgaard.

“The move is based on a breach of Telenor’s code of conduct in relations to a procurement process,” he said, adding that the suspension applies to all of the Norwegian firm’s operating companies worldwide. Telenor has mobile operations in 12 countries, specialising in the Nordics, the Balkans and a handful of Asian markets.

Earlier this year, Telenor’s Bangladeshi property, Grameenphone, moved to investigate allegations of child labour a subcontractor to one of its suppliers. On September 4th, Telenor’s EVP, Hilde Tonne, said:

“This clearly shows the dilemmas we face when doing business in developing countries. Telenor is systematically working to evaluate and develop health, safety and environmental issues with our subcontractors, but there will always be challenges in developing countries and we have in the past few months concentrated on those that we are in direct relationship with. When we or others reveal unacceptable conditions further down the value chain, we will of course respond.”

There is no suggestion that similar reasons are behind the suspension of Telenor’s relationship with ZTE.