Telecoms firm CellOne has gone to court in a bid to block a move by regulators to strip it of a chunk of the airwaves.

Now the firm has launched a legal bid against the Minister of Economic Development Grant Gibbons in a bid to reverse the decision by watchdogs the Regulatory Authority of Bermuda (RAB).

No one at CellOne was available for comment last night — but it is understood the firm are raging at the decision to remove the spectrum for the firm and reassign it to another user.

And on Monday, in a hearing in Chambers before Chief Justice Ian Kawaley, the telecoms firm fired its opening salvo in its attempt to retain the valuable slice of the airwaves.

And US Consul General Bob Settje became involved after he was approached by a US lobbying firm working for US company Atlantic Tele-Network, CellOne’s parent.

Mr Settje told the authority last November that he did not want to challenge the decision to cut CellOne’s bandwidth allocation, but that he had been asked to pass on CellOne’s “willingness to engage the Regulatory Authority directly to hopefully find a solution without resorting to litigation, which, as I understand it, is almost certain to result if the proposed decision is made final”.

The legal moves followed a decision last month by the RAB after an investigation by consultants LS Telecom into bandwidth use, which said that Bermuda Digital Communications (BDC), the parent of CellOne, was “not currently making efficient use” of part of the spectrum issued to it and that “further, that BDC has not demonstrated a reasonable need for this spectrum”.

The investigation report added: “The Authority has determined ... that in order to ensure the efficient use of this spectrum, it is necessary to reclaim this spectrum so that it can be made available for use by other licensees.”

And RAB ordered BDC to hand back the bandwidth by the end of March.

Sources close to the industry, however, said that BDC had argued that it had plans for the section of bandwidth — which is suitable for 4G services not available in Bermuda at present.

It is understood that BDC had argued that the RAB decision would cause substantial delays to CellOne’s plans to introduce 4G services.

RAB documents also show that BDC had claimed that RAB had compromised them by disclosing sensitive commercial information to rivals Digicel — a claim the RAB rejected.

The RAB report said: “The authority has made every effort to inform itself of the views of all stakeholders in this proceeding in the interests of fairness and transparency.

“The authority has expended considerable time and resources in analysing and formulating its views on the evidence submitted by BDC and other interested parties, together with the technical evaluations and benchmarking studies prepared by LS Telecom.”

And the report added: “By any measure, this investigation has been conducted in a fair and reasonable manner, with due consideration having been given to reasonable requests for the confidential treatment of commercially sensitive information.”

A spokesman for the Regulatory Authority said last night: “The Regulatory Authority has been served with an appeal against its decision regarding CellOne’s challenge to the Authority’s conclusions concerning Cellone’s spectrum efficiency.

“The Authority believes it has made the correct decision and will be defending its position at court.”