OREANDA-NEWS. August 13, 2014. The Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS Russia) established the fact of North-West Inter-Regional Office for State Highway Control, of the Federal Service for Transport Surveillance, assigning the functions for testing subscriber telematic terminals to “GLONASS North-West” Ltd.

“It is certainly not the first and probably not the last case on violating the antimonopoly law by a regional Office of Rostransnadzor that failed to exercise the functions for testing whether GLONASS-based subscriber telematic terminals for vehicle tracing comply with the requirements, and instead used the results of some tests carried out by economic entities”, pointed out Vladimir Kudryavtsev, the Head of FAS Information Technology Department.

At the same time, under Clause 5 of No. 20 Order of the Ministry of Transport of the Russian Federation “On Approving the Procedures for Equipping Vehicles in Operation, Including Special Vehicles, M Category, Used for Commercial Passenger Transportation, and N Category, Used to Transport Hazardous Goods, with GLONASS or GLONASS/GPS Satellite Navigation Devices” of 26.01.2012 (No. 20 Order), the function for testing subscriber telematic terminals was assigned to regional Offices of Rostransnadzor.

The FAS Commission established that the Office of Rostransnadzor in St Petersburg and the Leningrad Region violated Part 3 Article 15 of the Federal Law “On Protection of Competition” by assigning the function, which under No. 20 Order must be executed by it, to an economic entity - “GLONASS North-West” Ltd.

FAS did not issue a determination because on 8th April 2014 the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation pronounced No. 20 Order invalid.

[1] Subscriber telematic terminals – hardware-software devices used to determine the current location and parameters of vehicle movement, interacting with the Automated Control Centre of the Federal Service for Transport Surveillance.