A court decision on April 12 put the introduction of mobile number portability on hold again in Ukraine, meaning Ukrainian cell phone users will have no choice but to stick with their current operator if they want to keep the same cell phone number.
The constant delays deliver severe blows to economic competition, effectively denying customers one of their most effective ways to choose the best service.
Instead, many customers remain with their current service provider merely because they’ve had the same number for many years and don’t want to change.
Mobile number portability, which is available in more than 70 countries but not in Ukraine, had been at its final stage: Kyiv-based SI Center, a daughter company of Softinvest Holding, which won the tender to launch portability, started in late March setting up the software to manage the new service.
But the Ukrainian Supreme Commercial Court ruled on April 12 to resume legal proceedings on the issue due to a complaint by Dialink, which lost out to SI Center in the tender.
SI Centre says this means that the launch of portability has been suspended for at least several months.
“We were planning to finish all the work by the end of April… But since we cannot do this now the mobile operators cannot start their part of the work after this,” Sergiy Yeryomin, the CEO of SI Center, told the Kyiv Post.
He added it’s unclear how long this process will be stalled in the courts, as Dialink has lodged several court cases.
From three to five million people are expected to change their mobile operators after the service goes live, according to the estimates of the State Radio Frequency Center, which is overseeing the introduction of number portability.
The launch of mobile number portability would inevitably force mobile providers to improve services and cut prices, experts say.
Legal collision
SI Center won the contract to launch the service in April 2016 with a bid of $1.47 million in a tender held by the State Radio Frequency Center.
Dialink had won an earlier tender held in 2015 with a bid of $2.63 million, but this decision was overturned by Ukraine’s Anti-Monopoly Commission after SI Center appealed against it.
The Nashi Hroshi investigative website reported in February 2016 that Dialink company had among its founders Gennady Iliyin, a former deputy of Kyiv City Council and a former chief bodyguard of President Petro Poroshenko.
Another founding partner of Dialink was Larysa Yamchukova, the wife of the former head of the State Migration Service Sergiy Radutny, according to Nashi Hroshi.
No spokespeople for Dialink were available for comment.
Yeryomin said that Dialink had also filed a complaint to the High Administrative Court challenging the decision of the Anti-Monopoly Commission to strip the company of its earlier win in the lucrative tender.
On April 20, the High Administrative Court will hold a hearing on this, and if it decides in favor of Dialink, both Dialink and SI Center will have won the tender to introduce portability.
“There will be a legal collision,” Yeryomin said.
Mobile number portability was to have been introduced in 2011 after parliament passed the relevant bill in July 2010.
But the introduction has been stalled several times over the years since then.
Not this year
Vadym Gulko, the executive director the State Radio Frequency Center, said the center would continue to work on the implementation of portabiity regardless of the court’s decision.
The Ukraine’s three mobile operators, Lifecell, Kyivstar and Vodafone, claim that it will take at least six months to test and tweak the new service before it can be fully rolled out.
That means that if no agreement is reached by summer, Ukrainians won’t see the benefit this year.
All three mobile operators claim they want their customers to have number portability. But it will force them to spend more, said Stanislav Yurasov, a journalist covering telecommunications.
He added that Lifecell, the smallest of the three operators, “has always been the most interested” in the new service.
