BUENOS AIRES, Argentina-The Chilean branch of Nextel received a hard blow when the 29th Civil Judge of Santiago declared the 18 licenses granted by the government for mobile digital service to be void. The findings of the justice established that the concessions should be granted by public competition, similar to the country’s procedure for other cellular telephone concessions.
In this way, the provisory authorization to implement the service remains unvalidated, although such validation had been granted in May by the Subsecretary of Telecommunications. It is a first instance finding, which will surely be appealed by Nextel before the Court of Appeals.
Cellular operators BellSouth and Smartcom PCS took the issue to the courts. “We always sustained that Nextel had come through the back door. Because of this, we are happy with the resolution declared by the judge,” declared Jaime Gros, general manager of Smartcom PCS.
For his part, Guillermo Pickering, president of the Association of Mobile Telephone Companies, which consists of the four cellular operators, assured that “The mobile companies have always asked that a new incoming operator is made to comply with the same prerequisites of those which they themselves were obligated to comply with in order to win their concessions. That is to say, a public contest in order to provide this service and the establishment of investment of a social character, which was to be an inherent result of the respective concession.”
NII Holdings has 1.24 million customers in five countries of Latin America. Nextel Chile is its smallest branch, with 7,000 corporate clients. It provides its analog service to the cities of Santiago, Valpara
