Ukraine's Cabinet of Ministers has approved the conditions of a tender to sell 3G (UMTS) licenses, which were put forth by the National Commission for Communications and IT Regulation on October 28, 2014.

Cabinet resolution No. 1181 of November 5, 2014 was published on the government's website on Monday evening to give the go-ahead for a tender to sell licenses for the use of Ukraine's radio frequency (RF) resources to introduce UMTS technology under International Mobile Telecommunications-2000 (IMT-2000) specifications covering the following frequency bands: 1920-1935/2110-2125, 1950-1965/2140-2155, 1965-1980/2155-2170 MHz.

As was reported, the conditions put forth by the commission foresee that three licenses will be put up for sale at the tender. The starting price of each license is fixed at UAH 2.443 billion. Costs of RF conversion estimated at UAH 1.6 billion shall be covered by operators.

It will take 23 months to conduct the first phase of conversion and its cost will be UAH 532.5 million, it will take 18 months to conduct the second phase worth UAH 534.51 million and 17 months to conduct the third phase worth UAH 534.4 million.

The commission earlier reported that after the approval of the 3G tender conditions by the government it was ready to announce the tender, which could be held 60 days after.

At the moment, 3G frequencies in Ukraine are owned by the 3Mob operator, which belongs to Ukrtelecom controlled by businessman Rinat Akhmetov's SCM Group.