Telecoms Regulator Could be Fired For Misleading Public On BTC Deal

By , 17 Oct 2018, 14:30 PM Business
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STA, 16 October 2018 - The governing council of the Agency for Communications Networks and Services, the national telecoms regulator, has proposed the dismissal of director Tanja Muha due to the controversial awarding of spectrum for experimental next-generation wireless services to the shopping mall operator BTC. 

The council said late on Monday that Muha had misled the public with her statements about the awarding of the licence, and proposed that the government dismiss her.

Muha responded by saying the council did not clarify the grounds for its motion as required by law, which means it is unlawful, and she was not invited to the session to respond to the allegations.

The motion is the result of two weeks of acrimony over the awarding of an experimental, non-commercial licence to BTC for testing driverless vehicles in Ljubljana's huge shopping district BTC.

The focus was initially on Boris Koprivnikar, the former public administration minister, who took an executive job at BTC right after he left office to focus on the company's digital policy.

The agency is formally independent but falls under under the purview of the Public Administration Ministry. Both Koprivnikar and Muha were members of the Modern Centre Party (SMC), but Koprivnikar recently left the party.

Koprivnikar quit the BTC job just days into his tenure and BTC immediately returned the licence saying that it did not in fact need it, but media then pointed the spotlight at the regulator.

The agency's council determined that Muha had misled the public in a report when she said BTC received the licence because it had secured EU funds for a 5G project.

In fact, BTC has not participated in any such EU projects, which is a condition in the law for awarding experimental licences.

Muha said the agency had checked whether the EU project in question, InnoHPC Interreg, existed but did not verify the nature of BTC's involvement.

According to information on the website of the InnoHPC (High-performance Computing for Effective Innovation in the Danube Region), the Slovenian partners in this transnational project are the Novo Mesto Faculty of Information Studies, Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Slovenia - Electronic and Electrical Engineering Association and the University of Ljubljana.

The scandal erupted when Pozareport, a portal well known for breaking stories based on leaks, alleged that Koprivnikar got the BTC job by arranging the licence for BTC.

Both Koprivnikar and BTC have denied any wrongdoing.

BTC explained for the STA on Tuesday that its application for the experimental licence stated that the company had at the time been active in the InnoHPC Interreg project, rather than its being part of the consortium.

At the time of the application, the project was ongoing, but it had already been closed to register as a partner, BTC said.

The company added that it had been active in the project in order to meet new partners from industry and academia to exchange experience and expertise related to autonomous vehicles.

Most of the other projects listed in BTC's application for the experimental licence had later registration dates. BTC is currently preparing an application for the ICT-19-2019 call.

The call's topic is advanced 5G validation trials across multiple vertical industries and it is expected to involve partners form more than ten European countries, including several public institutions and private firms from Slovenia.

The amended electronic communications act states that experimental licences for new technologies may be issued for a period no longer than three years.

BTC said that its application for the licence as well as the agency's decision to award it the licence stated that the spectrum was awarded for planned European projects, mostly to be implemented after 2018.

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