Hungary’s Curia (Supreme Court) has dismissed an appeal by Digi Communications that it was unlawfully excluded from a 5G auction in the country.
In a statement, the regulator NMHH, which organised the auction, says that the Curia ruling supported the judgement of the Court of First Instance that NMHH “had taken a well-founded decision on legal grounds” in making its decision.
The Curia’s verdict says that Digi Kft, the Hungarian subsidiary of Dutch-registered Digi Communications, chose not to apply directly to participate in the auction as it saw it would be excluded. Instead, it decided to do so through its parent company, which had it secured frequencies would have transferred them to Digi Kft. In Curia’s view, Digi Communications’ participation “would have violated the purity of the auction process”. There is no further appeal allowed to the judgement.
As previously reported by Broadband TV News, NMHH awarded the 5G frequencies, in controversial circumstances, to Magyar Telekom, Telenor Hungary and Vodafone Hungary in March 2020.
