Mr. Kakhi Bekauri causes the State Budget to lose millions of Lari and serves as a barrier to the development of the Georgian telecommunications sector

Seven years of Kakhi Bekauri’s “service” as the Chairman of the Commission (was elected Chairman of the Commission in 2017 and, before than, member of the Commission in 2014) is a clear demonstration of how not to run a collegiate regulatory body. Any action performed by the Commission chaired by Mr. Kakhi Bekauri has been inconsistent, harmful to the sector, and barrier-setting – artificially creating new impediments instead of addressing problems.  

Behind all of these are mostly the Commission Chairman’s incompetence, personal retaliation, unhealthy ambitions, and unlimited powers tailored to him that ultimately turn the Commission into an entity having a severely negative influence.  

By law, one of the core functions of the Commission is to manage frequency resources and ensure their effective use. The Commission, though, fails to perform the function. Since Kakha Bekauri was made Chairman of the Commission in 2017, the main licenses for mobile communications have been sold only twice. The incompetence of the Commission manifested even in the fact that some of the current frequencies had been issued technically inconsistently, preventing full and effective use of the frequency to be issued.   

On 29 July 2021, Magticom asked the Commission to roll out an 800 MHz frequency bandwidth, which, had it been purchased, the Company would have significantly enhanced the 4G capacities and the State Budget would have received millions of Lari in revenues. In turn, the request was due to a considerable surge in internet traffic. In response to Magticom’s request, the Commission informed that it was going to invite bids for the necessary 5G frequencies in the nearest future and that the 800 MHz frequency bandwidth would also be available at that auction.  

The nearest future for the Commission arrived only 2 years thereafter. At the auction, the Commission rolled out frequency bandwidths with unreasonable license obligations, thereby breaching the technological neutrality principle contemplated by law. It is noteworthy that the operators taking part in the auction had been unaware of specifically which frequency spectra they were bidding for. Besides, the Commission rolled out frequencies to build the 4G and 5G networks in a way to force the operator into purchasing the frequency with the license obligation to grant MVNOs mandatory access to its network (just as it was during the Soviet era – it was mandatory to buy volumes of Marx, Engels and Lenin in order to buy collections of a classicist’s works). Could the Commission Chairman’s attempt to introduce mandatory MVNOs be the result of his unnatural interest? (!!!)   

What was the end result? Two largest operators declined to participate in the auction, and only in this particular example, the State Budget was deprived of tens of millions of Lari in revenues. In turn, due to the whims of a “caring” Commission, millions of subscribers have been prevented from enjoying the current hi-tech values, with significant interruptions in the development of mobile services, implementation of sizable investments, creation of jobs and, intimately, the economic progress of the country. This, in turn, affects Georgia’s aspirations for integration with EU and Euro-Atlantic structures.