Ukrtelecom, Ukraine’s largest telecommunications company, believes the only alternative to creation of a Universal Telecom Services Fund to be exclusion of local and rural communications services from list of services the state guarantees to all citizens (universal services), the company has announced in a statement.
Ukrtelecom no longer wants to defray all expenses related to provision of universal services. It notes that at the moment it renders rural communication services to 1.4 million people for a subscriber fee of UAH 12 a month, while prime costs are much higher.
The public operator opines, creation of a Fund for Universal Telecom Services is a variant of compensating the difference between the real prime costs of the service and the tariff the state sets for the universal service.
Alternatively Ukrtelecom is proposing remove the loss-making services from the list of universal services.
“The second [variant] is to exclude the services of local and rural communications from the list of universal services and provide Ukrtelecom with the right to fix the rates for these services on its own and independently pass decisions on terminating such services if these bring no profits,” the company said in its statement.
Ukrtelecom also accuses mobile operators of antisocial lobbyism of their interests, aimed at destroying fixed-line communications in rural areas.
As Ukrainian News earlier reported, mobile operators on August 12 came forward with a statement on irrelevance of creation of a Fund for Universal Telecom Services.
The Cabinet of Ministers proposed in January 2009 that the parliament create a fund for universal telecommunications services, into which communications operators are to contribute 3% of the value of the services they provide (excluding value-added tax). However, in March parliament rejected the relevant draft law.
