Sweden’s army is worried that the sale of the country's state controlled telecommunications company to the Chinese or Germans could threaten national security.

TeliaSonera is 37% owned by the Swedish government and 13.7% by the Finnish one.The Swedish want to sell off their portion as part of a privatisation drive.

However the army is concerned because it uses the network and any new owner could discover secret locations of military hardware and snoop on internal communications.

Per Nilsson, head of the armed forces command, control and communications division said that any owner must be trustworthy.France Telecom and Deutsche Telekom have been names as likely owners. It is more likely that the army is concerned about Chinese telecoms operators who have also wanted to be involved.

It is possible that the company will be broken up and the part the military uses be given to it to control. The military might even buy its own network. X