Court Delays Lawsuit over VimpelCom's Far East Frequencies

MOSCOW, Aug 17 (Prime-Tass) -- Moscow's Presnensky District Court has postponed until Friday the hearings of a lawsuit, filed by the State Radio Frequency Commission, appealing against a ruling by the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) that ordered the commission to provide frequencies in Russia's Far East to the country's second largest mobile operator VimpelCom.

The commission refused to provide the frequencies last year, prompting the operator to file a complaint with the Federal Antimonopoly Service, which sided with the mobile operator in March.

Meanwhile, on Tuesday the court rejected a lawsuit by the Federal Communications Agency that sought to overturn the FAS ruling. The Federal Communications Agency filed a motion against the ruling on June 5. The State Radio Frequency Commission reports to the Federal Communications Agency.

In addition, on August 21, the Moscow Arbitration Court is expected to consider another lawsuit VimpelCom filed in July against the State Radio Frequency Commission for failure to act on an antitrust ruling and issue the license to VimpelCom.

The State Radio Frequency Commission is in charge of providing frequencies to operators, while the Federal Service for Communications Oversight, or Rossvyaznadzor, issues licenses for telecommunication services.

The Moscow Arbitration Court ruled Monday in a separate lawsuit that Rossvyaznadzor should issue the Far East license to VimpelCom's subsidiary East West Telecom. The Moscow Arbitration Court Monday obliged the regulator to issue the license to East West Telecom for GSM 1800 standard mobile services in 30 cities in the Far East within 10 days.

East West Telecom, or Vostok Zapad Telecom, was merged into VimpelCom in late April. VimpelCom has a right to demand a license for itself once its now-nonexistent susbsidiary gets one. VimpelCom plans to reregister the license under its own name and start providing mobile services in regions of the Far East where it is currently not allowed to operate.

Rossvyaznadzor declined to provide the license earlier this year, prompting VimpelCom to go to court.

VimpelCom has sought to expand its operations to all 13 regions of the Far Eastern Federal District. Currently, the company is only present 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 regions of the district.

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Posted to the site on 17th August 2006