The High Court of Justice today extended the exemption from a building permit granted to new mobile carriers Golan Telecom Ltd. and Hot Mobile Ltd. to build mobile access facilities (small cellular antennas).
The exemption was due to expire on Monday, which would have forced to two carriers to obtain a building permit for each facility. In contemporary Israel, that is an almost mission impossible, because of problems raised by municipalities and the government against the new and veteran mobile carriers.
The High Court of Justice's decision is a life-saver for Golan Telecom and Hot Mobile, but the court will apparently not continue to ignore the government's refusal to settle the cellular antenna problem, and ordered the parties to submit responses by December 5, ahead of a decision on the matter.
The High Court of Justice heard Golan Telecom's petition to extend the exemption because of the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Interior's objections to the extension, while the Ministry of Communications supports the carriers and wants a creative solution for the building of cellular antennas legally and in an orderly manner. The dispute between the ministries and the fact that no minister of communications has been prepared to deal with the matter is a systematic and political failure that is hindering the development of Israel's business sector.
The mobile carriers, the public, and the country need a solution, because the carriers cannot meet demand for mobile services over their current networks, and more antennas are a critical part of the solution.
The likely solution is to reduce the number of networks (but not the number of carriers) to three networks, which will be used by all five carriers. But the government is not doing anything about this either, with the result that service is deteriorating.
Golan Telecom and Hot Mobile both have hundreds of cellular antenna, built without building permits, more than the three veteran carriers. Absurdly, Golan Telecom, which uses the network of Cellcom Israel Ltd. (NYSE:CEL; TASE:CEL), has more antennas than Cellcom: more than 700 compared with fewer than 500, respectively. Hot Mobile, has more antennas than Pelephone Communications Ltd., whose network it uses.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on October 1, 2013
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