About

Anna Byström, general counsel and head of the legal, public and regulatory affairs team at Telenor Sweden, began her legal career as a trainee at Baker & McKenzie, before working in Vinge’s IT and telecoms department for seven years, including a secondment period in Vinge’s Paris office. In 2008, she left Vinge to work as an in-house counsel for Telenor Sweden for two and a half years. In 2011, Byström left to become partner of the boutique law firm Frank, representing clients with telecoms and IT law and contracts, payment services, and M&A. Then in 2014, she returned to Telenor and later that same year became general counsel heading the legal and regulatory team, and in 2017 added leadership of the public affairs team to her remit. In that time the business has seen a number of big deals and prominent issues. For example, Telenor has two joint venture companies with the telecoms operators Three and Tele2 regarding 3G and 2G/4G networks respectively. In 2016, it negotiated and finalised a new agreement with Tele2 regarding collaboration for the building and roll-out of a future 5G network. Telenor and its legal team featured in a landmark ISP case and brought attention to their stance on the “open internet” issue. In 2014, Telenor’s subsidiary Bredbandsbolaget, now merged with Telenor, was sued by several music and film companies claiming that it should block certain web sites containing content infringing IP. The team contested the claim on the basis that Bredbandsbolaget had not contributed to IP infringement. It successfully won the case in the court of first instance. The case was appealed and the Court of Appeals found that, ISPs can be held co-responsible for IP infringements. The decision was a surprise to many including legal experts, however, the outcome was successful in that the court found that Telenor had not contributed to the IPR infringement. ‘This decision was important to the entire ISP sector in Sweden. The fact that we fought for the “open internet”, and that ISPs should not have to block web sites without prior court decision, was widely noticed and covered by media in Sweden, other parts of EU and in the USA’. During the legal procedure and in the aftermath of the court decision, Byström has, on behalf of Telenor, taken part in debates and dialogues in media and with legislative bodies. She has also been heavily involved in the public debate surrounding Swedish privacy law and the December 2016 ECJ ruling which found Swedish data retention legislation to be too extensive and in violation of fundamental human rights. She has worked to support legislative bodies to remedy this problem between human rights and security concerns. Telenor Sweden has been and is still going through a digital transformation and has a strategic approach to be a digital frontrunner. At the same time, the entire Telenor legal team and Byström herself have had a strong, proactive, cost and efficiency focus with a close relationship to the rest of the business.