The Roaming Condition: Victory (At Last) For New Entrants
In October 1999, potential new entrants to the United Kingdom mobile market secured a significant victory as a result of the Court of Appeal's ruling in Mercury Personal Communications Ltd (A Firm Trading as One2One)(Respondent) v. Secretary of State for the Department of Trade & Industry (Appellant). A full copy of the decision may be located at the on-line subscription service http://www.lawtel.co.uk. The Court of Appeal overturned the High Court's earlier decision upholding One2One's claim that the United Kingdom Government was acting unlawfully by requiring existing mobile network operators, as a pre-condition for participation in the upcoming auction for third-generation ("3G") spectrum licences, to allow new entrants to "roam" on to the existing networks while rolling out their networks. Under the Court of Appeal's judgment, the United Kingdom Government is now entitled to require that all existing operators (including Vodafone, BT Cellnet and Orange) provide "roaming" services to new entrants, subject to the requirements of the Roaming Condition as proposed by the Director General of Telecommunications ("DGT"). The decision is significant to the United Kingdom Government who had been forced to delay the 3G spectrum auction (now scheduled for February 21,2000) pending the Court of Appeal's decision, given that many potential new entrants struggled to create a business case for the construction of a 3G network without roaming.