Russian Court Rules Regulator Should Grant Far East License to VimpelCom

MOSCOW, Aug 14 (Prime-Tass) -- The Moscow Arbitration Court ruled Monday that a regulator should issue a license for providing mobile services in Russia's Far East to the country's second largest operator VimpelCom.

Thus the court upheld the lawsuit VimpelCom filed against the Federal Service for Communications Oversight, or Rossvyaznadzor, which turned down VimpelCom's request for the license.

On August 21, the same court is expected to consider another lawsuit VimpelCom filed in July against the the State Radio Frequency Commission for failure to act on an antitrust ruling and issue the license to a VimpelCom subsidiary in Russia's Far Eastern Federal District.

Earlier following its decision against issuing the license, the commission failed to act on the Federal Antimonopoly Service's (FAS) ruling to the contrary. The antitrust regulator had ordered the commission to cancel its decision that rejected VimpelCom subsidiary's application for radio frequencies and to re-consider the application.

VimpelCom has sought to expand its operations to all the 13 regions of the Far Eastern Federal District. So far the company has been present only in four regions of the federal district, which has a population of about 6 million people.

VimpelCom's key rivals, mobile operators MTS and MegaFon, have licenses to operate in all the regions of the district. MegaFon is the only operator that has a license covering Russia's entire territory.

End"

Posted to the site on 14th August 2006