| Leonid Reiman will think about how to implement the law The VimpelCom company (operator of the Bee Line brand) intends to merge its subsidiary KB Impulse and has already begun preparations for the merger. Thus, VimpelCom hopes to “fundamentally” resolve recently arising disagreements with regulatory authorities. True, this process is very risky, so the operator will first wait for appropriate clarifications from the Ministry of Communications of the Russian Federation.
Let us recall that in January, during an inspection, Gossvyaznadzor unexpectedly discovered a violation in the operation of Bee Line, due to the fact that the operator is not the direct holder of the license to provide cellular communication services in the Moscow region in the GSM standard. The license belongs to OJSC KB Impulse, whose 100% shareholder is currently OJSC VimpelCom. In fact, KB Impulse does not conduct any activities, and the need for its creation was dictated by the fact that by the time it received a license for the GSM standard, Bee Line already had a license for another standard - AMPS, and at that time one operator could not be owner of two licenses at once. At the same time, contracts with subscribers are concluded on behalf of VimpelCom, and it was this circumstance that Gossvyaznadzor did not like, which demanded that the company reissue all contracts with Moscow clients. However, this order was obviously impossible to implement, since the number of the operator’s capital subscribers exceeds 5.5 million. In connection with this, VimpelCom filed a claim with Gossvyaznadzor in the Moscow Arbitration Court, which suspended the order. The review of the operator's complaint is scheduled for March 18.
By merging KB Impulse, VimpelCom expects to re-register its license to itself and thus eliminate the very subject of the dispute. “We still do not see any violations in the procedure for providing services that has been in effect in the company for six years and is accepted today,” emphasizes the company’s PR director Mikhail Umarov. - And no one has proven the opposite. Moreover, we had planned such a reorganization a long time ago, as well as the current merger of our other subsidiary, VimpelCom-R (dealing with regional operator projects. - Ed. ).”
Finam company analyst Oleg Shenker believes that VimpelCom took the simplest path, “however, the Law on Communications, which came into force on January 1, although it provides for the re-issuance of a license, does not describe how this process itself should take place; instead, it contains numerous references to by-laws that have not yet been adopted.” In confirmation of this, the head of the information policy department of the Ministry of Communications, Pavel Shipilin, told the Vremya Novostey newspaper: “Re-issuance of licenses to the successor should be carried out in accordance with the federal law “On Communications” after the government adopts a resolution on the list of names of communication services included in licenses and lists licensing conditions."
“The operator should not have any problems with re-issuing a license. But there will be difficulties with the transmission of frequencies currently assigned to KB Impulse,” says Aton analyst Nadezhda Golubeva. - You will have to first “hand over” them to Gossvyaznadzor, and then submit an application for them. Considering the current difficulties in relations between VimpelCom and regulatory authorities, there is a great risk for Bee Line.”
Yesterday, as the Vremya Novostey newspaper already reported, acting. Minister of Communications Leonid Reiman said that VimpelCom “only needs to reissue its license” and that other operators, in particular Mobile Telesystems, have already gone through this procedure. MTS explained this story: “It so happened that the license for the GSM-1800 standard did not belong to MTS itself, but to our subsidiary Rosico.” To simplify the company structure, we decided to re-register the license to ourselves. However, the law “On Communications” in force at that time did not provide for such a thing as re-issuance of a license. But since there were no complaints from the regulatory authorities against us, we, having annexed Rosico, simply canceled its license and immediately registered it with MTS OJSC. Igor KOROLEV |
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