- Office of Electronic Communications

The 2007 tender for 1800 MHz frequencies annulled

On 31 January 2018, President of the Office of Electronic Communications issued  a second instance decision maintaining the decision which annulled the 2007 tender for two general exclusive frequency licences, each covering 49 duplex channels with 95 MHz duplex spacing in the 1710-1730 and 1805-1825 frequency bands in the whole area of Poland, for use in the public telecommunications network by 31 December 2022. 

• The President of UKE annulled the tender taking account of the legal assessment by the Supreme Administrative Court expressed in its judgment of 3 February 2011 (II GSK 88/10), the judgment of 8 May 2014 (II GSK 305/13) and the judgment of 20 October 2016 (II GSK 262/15).
• The ground for annulment was gross violation of the law as specified in Article 118d (1) of the Telecommunications Act. The gross violation of the law took place because of a formalistic approach of the Tender Committee which required that each page of the offer should be initialled, and applied this requirement also to cases where the signature of an authorised representative of the tender participant was placed on a given page of the offer. Such conduct according to the Court flagrantly violates Article 2 of the Constitution of the Republic of Poland since it fails to meet public interest objectives related to reliability of the tender procedure and does not take account of the principle of proportionality arising from Article 2 of the Constitution.

The issued decision is subject to complaint to the Province Administrative Court for the parties of the proceedings. The issued decision does not affect the frequency licence decisions issued after the tender. These decisions remain valid and constitute the basis for the provision of telecommunications services.