Today, we’d like to speak publicly about the problem that worried Ucom Armenian company and which we’ve learned about with deep regret. The matter is that the Public Services Regulatory Commission, in our opinion, manifests biased attitude, as a result of which its decisions are adapted to the communication operator, which has over 60% of the mobile communications market share.
Let us explain: on December 12, 2018 PSRC has announced a competition for the use of 811-821 MHz and 852-862 MHz radio frequencies and, in our opinion, it should have set the same conditions (the starting price, in particular) that were set out back in 2013 for the competition over permission to use the radio frequency (LTE+) enabling the same connection quality; whereto Ucom has taken part and purchased the permission at the price of 6.225 billion AMD. In addition, that permission limited Ucom to the delivery of data transmission services only (voice services were excluded).
Having no permission of using the mentioned radio frequencies, MTS Armenia during this year, according to our information, has built a network operating at the corresponding radio frequencies (LTE+) (acquired equipment and installed that), apparently being confident of the victorious outcome of the competition for itself.
Ucom considers it unacceptable to set the starting price of the same resource usage permission at 6.225 billion AMD for one operator, while reducing it for another operator for over 4 times, up to 1.5 billion AMD. Today, under the scarcity of the state budget funds, when each penny is important for the recovery of the country’s economy, the PSRC has set a lower cost of several billion drams for the permission to use the same resource. Ucom finds, that thus MTS Armenia tries to enter the mobile market of high speeds (LTE+) with unequal competitive conditions.
We’ll look at the case more closely after holidays.