Russian MTS responds to Bidzina Ivanishvili's statement

The Russian telecommunications company MTS makes the  first comment on Bidzina Ivanishvili's accusations in a conversation with commersant.ge.

Bidzina Ivanishvili received information from the Polish journalists that the Russian cellular communications network  "MTS”  is enabled 200 meters from the South Ossetia de - facto border  and the network operator informs

 ”This is outrageous and I want to draw attention to it of the Russian government to refrain from such obscure steps. I do not know how this has been agreed with the authorities, but it is a Russian company. This is not a territory of  Russia , it’s a territory of Georgia, "- said Ivanishvili.

State Minister for Reintegration Paata Zakareishvili responds to the statement made by Prime Minister  as well. The Minister believes that the Russian company should be brought to account for illegal operation on the territory of Georgia.   

"Some companies have been shamelessly and knowingly acting on the territory of Georgia for many years. The previous authority only spoke about it and did nothing, we want to begin to work in that direction in order  all companies have the feeling that their activity will not remain unanswered, "- Paata Zakareishvili notes.

In order to clarify the issue commersant.ge got in touch with "MTS " head office. We received a brief response to the electronic letter from  the company's public relations office, which only says  that "MTS" doesn’t have the base stations in either South Ossetia or  Abkhazia. This, according to the Georgian National Communications Commission, indicates that "MTS " didn’t  carry out service from the abovementioned territories.

However, as the Commission states, they did not perform any monitoring of these areas and therefore, do not have the information as whether or not MTS really has any infrastructure in the  mentioned areas.

In addition, the Commission states that if we rely on the public discussions, the company might have some infrastructure and entering this territory the phone will automatically have the inscription "Welcome to Russia".

If the Russian company will be fined, is unknown, but as we were told by the National Communications Commission representative Khatia  Kurashvili, the Russian company "Megafon" and the "First Channel " were fined in recent years due to their activities throughout the occupied territory, but the fines are not paid  and due to the lack of the mechanism of activation of the penalties , an additional penalty was not imposed.