OREANDA-NEWS. June 02, 2014. The Expert Council of the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS Russia) on Communications held a session. It focused on judicial practice with regard to access of communications providers to apartment houses.

Experts discussed, in particular, the court rulings that a service company cannot require a provider chosen by a resident to enter in a non-gratuitous contract as a condition for providing access to an apartment house. Upon a FAS initiative, the issue was also included in the Road Map for developing competition.

Deputy Head of FAS Department for Control over Transport and Communications, Elena Zaeva, made a presentation on “Antimonopoly Control and Supervision in the Field of Communications”. “Frequently there are incidents when simultaneously both housing owners and providers pay for maintenance of the premises in joint shared ownership. In our opinion, it is unacceptable, since it constitutes double payments”, emphasized Elena Zaeva, drawing attention of the expert community to the main problems on the market.

Participants of the discussion included representatives of business, providers and the Ministry of Communications of the Russian Federation in the person of Deputy Director of the Department for Regulating Radio Frequencies and Communications Networks, Mikhail Bykovsky, who talked about drawing normative acts designed to simplify the procedures for providers’ access to residential property.

The Chairman of the Expert Council, Deputy Head of FAS Anatoly Golomolzin summed up the results of the meeting: “Within two weeks it is necessary to determine the principles to guide market participants, regulators and the antimonopoly body on considering the issues related to access to apartment houses and elaborating proposals towards improving normative-legal regulation in the field. The results of these efforts will be published at FAS official web-site, and recommendations based on them will be forwarded to all interested parties”.