The tender committee of the Ukrainian State Center for Radio Frequencies (USCRF) announced on Monday, 31 July, a decision on the situation with the protracted introduction of mobile number portability (MNP). MNP enables mobile telephone users to retain their mobile telephone numbers when changing from one mobile network carrier to another.
The regulator decided to start the choice of the supplier of the MNP base from anew, the industry publication ITC wrote.
The decision was due to the two-year legal battle between the companies that participated in the tender for the implementation of MNP.
On 5 January, 2016, USCRF announced LLC Dialink for the implementation of the project for the introduction of the MNP service. SI Center, who was not admitted to the evaluation phase of the tender, but suggested a price almost twice cheaper, and its partner Teletech have successfully appealed the results of the tender with the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine (AMC).
USCRF avoided a litigation with the AMC and fulfilled all of its requirements by announcing new winner, SI Center. After that, Dialink filed about 20 lawsuits to appeal the above decisions, as a result of which the implementation of MNP has been blocked for over six months.
In April 2017, the Supreme Economic Court of Ukraine reviewed the cassation appeal of Dialink and overturned the decisions of lower courts and sent the case for a new consideration.
The implementation of mobile number will be suspended for at least another few months.