Ukraine's UMC Buys CDMA-450 Mobile License

MOSCOW, July 26 (Prime-Tass) -- Ukraine's second largest mobile operator Ukrainian Mobile Communications, or UMC, has to pay a total of 94 million hryvnas for the recently issued CDMA-450 mobile license, Vladimir Oleinik, representative of National Commission for Communications Regulation (NKRS), told reporters late Tuesday.

Of the total, UMC has to pay 9 million hryvnas for the right to offer the services and 85 million hryvnas for frequency usage, Oleinik said.

The bill was issued on Monday and the company has to make the payment within a month, Oleinik said, adding that if it does not, the license would be cancelled.

UMC provides mobile services in GSM 900/1800 and NMT-450 standards. The latter is an outdated standard for 450MHz frequencies, which are also used under CDMA-450 standards. UMC planned to upgrade its outdated network to CDMA-450, but wanted to focus on providing mobile Internet services rather then voice services through the upgraded network, UMC?s General Director Adam Voyatsky said last week.

Oleinik suggested Tuesday that as the company wanted to focus on Internet access provision only, the license fee might be too steep for the company.

UMC received the license on July 13. UMC, fully controlled by Russia?s largest mobile operator Mobile TeleSystems (MTS), had about 15.112 million mobile service users as of June 30, according to Advanced Communications & Media (AC&M).

(5.05 hryvnas - U.S. $1)

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Posted to the site on 26th July 2006