Russian Court to Hear VimpelCom Suit Vs Frequency Commission

MOSCOW, Aug 28 (Prime-Tass) -- The Moscow Arbitration Court ruled on Monday to move the hearings of a case filed by Russia?s second largest mobile operator VimpelCom against the State Radio Frequency Commission and the country's IT and Telecommunications Ministry to September 18.

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

The court could not hear the case because the commission's representatives failed to attend the proceedings on August 21.

After earlier refusing to issue VimpelCom the license, the commission failed to act on a ruling by the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) to reconsider the operator's application.

In 2005, the commission refused to provide frequencies to VimpelCom in the Far Eastern Federal District prompting the operator to appeal to competition authorities, which sided with the mobile operator in March.

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 28th August 2006