Wall Street Journal | January 12, 2011 | Matthew Dalton
BRUSSELS (Dow Jones)–A small German technology firm has asked the European Commission to continue its probe of unfair subsidies allegedly given by the Chinese government to help its wireless modem manufacturers, mainly Huawei Technologies Corp. and ZTE Corp. (000063.SZ).
The commission, the EU’s executive arm, had started the investigation due to complaints from a small Belgian firm, Option NV (OPTI.BT), that Huawei and ZTE have used Chinese government subsidies to decimate Option’s share of the wireless modem market in Europe. But Option in October withdrew its complaints after reaching a “cooperation agreement” with Huawei that will see Option receive up to EUR41 million in payments from the Chinese telecommunications giant.
Option appeared to be the only European maker of “wireless wide-area network” modems, which are used to connect laptops to the Internet through mobile networks. That would mean the commission would likely have to drop the investigations without imposing tariffs.
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