Netia confident despite El-Net suit
Despite ongoing protests by telecom company El-Net over the government's awarding of a second fixed-line operating license for Warsaw to rival firm Netia, the latter doesn't expect to be denied the license, although its granting might be delayed, a company official said last week.
In keeping with the legalities of awarding the license, Netia filed a letter with the Communications Ministry on March 23 requesting that the license be issued, said Jolanta Ciesielska, Netia's spokeswoman. She added that the ministry is legally obligated to issue the license within 30 days after the request has been filed, so that Netia should have received the license on April 23. Cielsielska said she expected delays due to the Easter holiday and a legality that permits the ministry to wait another 30 days before issuing the license. Cielsielska said she wasn't familiar with the legal reason as to why the ministry could apply an additional 30-day delay.
El-Net, the telecom subsidiary of Elektrim, filed a lawsuit on April 13 against the Communications Ministry in Warsaw's district court, protesting the awarding of the second license to Netia this past March. El-Net charges that Maciej Srebro, the former communications minister who announced that a second tender would be held, breached the government's policy of granting only one operating license to an alternative telecom operator in each of the country's regions. Elektrim first filed a lawsuit against the ministry in the Supreme Administrative Court (NSA) in mid-March to stop the issuance of the second Warsaw operating license to Netia.
Neither current Communications Minister Tomasz Szyszko nor Marek Rusin and Jaroslaw Okragly, the two deputy ministers, could be reached for comment. The ministry has previously stated, however, that the tender for the second license was held due to El-Net's failure to connect any subscribers in Warsaw after it received the first license.
At the moment, El-Net is waiting for the district court to start examining its complaint, said Sebastian Bartosik, the press spokesman for El-Net.
"We intend to take all possible legal actions to prevent the granting of the next Warsaw license," Bartosik said. "This is our priority and main task, so at the moment we consider no other possibilities to solve that problem."
Netia is prepared to start connecting clients in Warsaw as soon as it gets its hands on the license, Cielsielska said. El-Net started connecting subscribers in the capital at the end of March after it signed an agreement with telephony systems integrator Millennium Communications to provide phone service to corporate clients in the Warsaw Financial Center, Bartosik said.
The dispute between El-Net, Netia and the Communications Ministry has dragged on since December 1998 when Elektrim outbid Netia for the first license to provide phone service in Warsaw. Elektrim agreed to pay a hefty sum of o245 million for the license, believing it would be the only alternative operator in the lucrative Warsaw market. Following the awarding of the license, Netia protested the fairness of the tender, and delayed the issuing of El-Net's license by six months.
On Nov. 18, 1999 Netia filed a case in the NSA to block the granting of the first operating license to El-Net. In its filing, Netia argued that there were more than 30 content related and legal faults in the documents submitted by El-Net.
