Zrada: Kiev court gave Ukrainian 4G frequencies to businessman from Russia
The Kiev Administrative Court of Appeal rejected the appeal of the National Commission for the Regulation of Communications and Informatization in the case against the telecom operator with Russian capital Es-Line.
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This is stated in his decision dated June 30.
On February 16, NCRSI for the second time refused to renew Es-Line’s nationwide license in the range of 2,3-2,345 GHz due to failure to comply with the requirements of the license conditions (incomplete development of radio frequencies). The company's license expired in April this year. There is no information in open sources about what services the company provides.
The courts of the first and second instances indicated that the National Commission did not have the right to refuse to extend the license to a company if one of the following circumstances exists: 1) the licensee fulfills all the conditions specified in the license; 2) the conditions specified in the license are not met for reasons beyond the control of the user.
The court refers to a letter from the Ukrainian State Radio Frequency Center dated March 3, 2016, which states that the General Staff did not approve the use of the company’s radio frequency spectrum for commercial purposes. From this, the court concluded that the deadline for mastering the license was violated by the company through no fault of its own.
At the same time, the panel of judges did not take into account the arguments of the NCRSI that Es-Line applied to the UGCR with applications to issue opinions on the electromagnetic compatibility of radio-electronic equipment for undeveloped radio frequency bands only in February 2016. After all, the license period expired in December 2008. And the General Staff could provide the necessary approvals back in the period from 2006 to 2008. “Such statements are based solely on assumptions,” the court said in its ruling.
Es-Line used to belong to the Ukrainian Beeline. After Beeline merged with Kyivstar, the company became the property of Russian businessman Evgeniy Roitman.
At the end of 2015, NCRSI began preparations for 4G competitions. In March, NCRSI already reserved the first portion of radio frequencies for the competition for fourth generation communications (4G, LTE), incl. Es-Line frequencies. By mid-2017, television channels will have to free up another portion of frequencies in the range of 700-800 MHz for mobile communications. And before the beginning of 2018, all procedures for preparing for tenders must be completed.
Let us also recall that in February the NCRSI did not allow the Es-Line company to begin the early implementation of 3GPP LTE (4G) radio technology throughout Ukraine. The corresponding decision was made at a meeting on February 23.
Recently it became known that NCRSI is going to increase the monthly fee for radio frequencies, which are also used by Es-Line, by almost 500 times.
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