The Arbitration Court of St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region ordered Mir Management Company, which manages 285 apartment buildings, to provide Er-Telecom Holding (ETX), operating under the Dom.ru brand, with access to its networks and equipment in 26 apartment buildings (24 of which are on Vasilievsky Island and one each in the Kirovsky and Central Districts of St. Petersburg). Dom.ru is a major internet provider and cable television operator, operating since 2004.
The plaintiff did not respond to DP’s request, but ETX stated in court that its networks have been installed in the disputed buildings since 2015. Effective May 1, 2025, Mir will not provide the company access to “communications networks, facilities, and equipment for either maintenance or emergency recovery operations.” According to ETH, its employees “repeatedly contacted the defendant for access, but access was denied.”
According to Alexandra Kuznetsova, an Associate at Nordic Star’s Dispute Resolution practice, this case is significant primarily because the dispute arose after a fundamental change in the regulation of relations between telecom operators and management companies. In April 2024, Federal Law No. 67 amended the Law “On Communications” and the Housing Code of the Russian Federation.
“They essentially changed the economic model for deploying telecommunications equipment in apartment buildings,” explains Alexandra Kuznetsova. “To provide communications services to residents, deploying networks on common property became free of charge, and previous agreements stipulating a fee for such deployment and access to equipment are subject to termination at the request of either party.”
The full commentary is available on the DP website.