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The Supreme Court has given the reason to Telephone to the hold that the royal decree issued in 2018 by the Government, which appointed automatically to the company to provide the service of telephone booths, flouted the law because he should have been granted through a public tender .
In its ruling, the room of the Contentious-Administrative has estimated the resource of the company that, I would be analyzing a possible claim to the State for the cost of such maintenance, although it may not stop providing this universal service obligation as it is currently in force the “pardon” that extended until, at least, until 2021.
According to collected to the judges, Telefónica claimed that the provision under appeal was contrary to the General Law of Telecommunications , which states that the designation of the operator for the provision of an element of universal service will be “through a mechanism of public procurement has not been carried out in this process.”
So, I noted, “the extension ‘or ‘ extension’ unilaterally performed by the Government” not only lacked legal coverage, but also had made “ignoring pending appeal” and had the private Phone of “the taking of business decisions in a framework of stable, predictable, clear and certainty”.
In its response to the appeal, the State bar defended the decision taken by the Executive as “because of the need to follow the observations of the Permanent Commission of the Council of State “, which that same year clarified at the last minute that the attempt to abolish the compulsory nature of this service which, by then, he was driving, had to be done by law.
however, the court has considered that this circumstance has arisen “does not justify” that could threaten the guarantees of the procedure , omitting a public contest, “which must be carried out through a mechanism open to all businesses to ensure the principles of objectivity, transparency and non-discrimination”.
15.450 booths in public
Currently, Phone is the in charge of maintaining not only the cabins, but the whole of the service universal given that, to become the contest desert year after year, the Ministry of Economy has just designating to the company.
The cost of maintaining the cabins is one s 4,5 million euros per year , according to the latest data of the National Commission of Markets and Competition (CNMC), which reviews the conditions of the provision of the service and that relate to 2016.
today, there are some 15.450 booths in the public right of way throughout the national territory , although they came to add the 65,000 at the end of the decade of 1990, according to the Spanish multinational.
according To these data, each cabin, service c om enzó to be installed in the streets of spain in 1928 , assumes an average cost of 291,3 euros per year, so every phone call registered out of a half to 2.5 euros.
