Currently, Viasat and Inmarsat have neither licenses nor frequency

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What could be the legal consequences of a claim?
The court has already granted the FAS's application for interim measures in the claim in the form of a ban on Roskomnadzor from issuing Viasat or its affiliated companies licenses to provide communications services and renewing existing ones, and also banned the State Commission on Radio Frequencies (SCRF, the main body that deals with the distribution of this resource in Russia) from allocating frequencies or making changes to existing decisions regarding Viasat or its affiliated companies.

assignments in Russia. Previously, Isat Global macedonia whatsapp resource Express had licenses for services for the provision of communication channels, for data transmission (except for voice information transmission), as well as for telematic services, follows from the Roskomnadzor database, but their validity expired in April 2023. At the end of 2017, the State Commission on Radio Frequencies also allocated Isat Global Express frequency bands of 29500–30000 MHz and 19700–20200 MHz for ten years for use by satellite communication earth stations in order to create the Russian segment of the Inmarsat Global Xpress satellite system, but in the fall of 2019 this decision was canceled, follows from the texts of the State Commission decisions.

In the application for interim measures, the FAS also asked the court to prohibit Inmarsat from making any changes related to the termination or suspension of current agreements with Morsvyazsputnik, including those related to the provision of Inmarsat communications services on the territory of Russia, citing a “threat to national security,” but the court did not satisfy this part of the requirements.

RBC sent a request to Morsvyazsputnik.

At present, all transactions concerning the acquisition or alienation of shares or stocks of foreign companies operating in Russia must undergo preliminary approval by the government commission, recalls Artem Konstantinov, head of the Antimonopoly Law and Government Procurement practice at the Lemchik, Krupskiy and Partners law firm. Since we are talking about a communications operator, the transaction must be carried out in accordance with both presidential decrees and the Law on Communications, that is, the liquidation of Inmarsat's domestic subsidiary, Isat Global Express, must go through the government commission, and the new owner of Inmarsat must provide official guarantees for the continuation of business in Russia, says Konstantinov.

The head of the satellite operator AltegroSky, Sergei Pekhterev, noted that as a result of the court-imposed interim measures, Viasat's activities in Russia will be illegal. "But they currently do not have licenses to operate in Russia and work through a partner, who has all the frequencies registered to him. The key here is not the court's decision, but Inmarsat's readiness to continue providing services through Morsvyazsputnik. If they do not do this, ship owners will have to look for a provider outside of Russia, and Inmarsat will lose customers and the ability to use the shore station in Vladivostok," Pekhterev continues. He also noted that since Viasat is an American company, it must comply with all sanctions imposed by the US authorities, and if they are imposed on Morsvyazsputnik, the latter will not be able to provide Inmarsat network services to Russian clients. "The best solution for everyone now is to not change anything in the existing business relations and communications organization," he concluded.