Court upholds amicable agreement in Scartel suit vs. Roskomnadzor
MOSCOW. April 12 (Interfax) - The ninth arbitration appeals court upheld an amicable agreement in Scartel LLC's suit against Russia's national regulator for the communications sector Roskomnadzor for withdrawing permission to use frequencies in the 2.5-2.7 gigahertz range.
Under the terms of the deal, Scartel (trademark Yota) will again apply to Roskomnadzor for frequency, and the regulator will have fifteen days to consider the matter and render a decision.
The company lodged an appeal with the Moscow Arbitration Court protesting the lifting of permission to make use in 170 cities of these frequencies, which the company wanted to use to develop its services. In December of last year, the court decided not to rule against the Roskomnadzor decision.
Deputy Roskomnadzor chief Alexander Katulevsky said last spring that a finding by the State Radio Frequency Commission, upon which Scartel was given the frequencies, stipulates the technical specifications of radio-electronic equipment to be used for WiMAX fixed and mobile Internet-access services. LTE (long-term evolution) has not been established as the communications standard for Russian regulations. LTE equipment specifications are almost identical to those used in WiMAX networks, Scartel's General Director Denis Sverdlov said.
Scartel put its WiMAX network into commercial use in Moscow and St. Petersburg in July of 2009, later that fall in Ufa, and last spring in Krasnodar and Sochi (frequencies in these cities are not the subject of the dispute with Roskomnadzor). Last year ended with 757,000 network users overall, of whom 63% were in Moscow.
The company's investments in Russia by the end of last year had reached $167.8 million, of which $142.6 million went into building and installation work and purchasing base-station equipment.