Layoffs planned at state-owned mobile company

More than half of the staff of MPVI Mobil, a state-owned company established to become the fourth player on Hungary's mobile telecommunications market, could be laid off soon, business daily Világgazdaság said on Tuesday, without naming any sources. Local press reports put the number of staff at the company at 64. The National Development Ministry said MPVI Mobil's owners -- Magyar Posta, the energy group MVM and the Hungarian development bank MFB -- were reviewing the possibilities when asked by Világgazdaság. MPVI Mobil won the biggest block in a frequency auction early in 2012. But a Budapest court ruled that the company had unlawfully won the right to build its own network. The court said that, according to the annex of the government decree effective at the time, the frequency that MPVI obtained cannot be allocated to a state-owned company. The court also ruled that Hungary's three existing mobile telcos -- who contested the results of the frequency auction in court -- were unlawfully awarded new frequency blocks. The decision annulling the results of the auction were upheld by the Kuria, Hungary's supreme court, in February.