Advice on Compliance with Regulatory Obligations

• Advising Three, Ireland's largest mobile operator, on ensuring compliance with regulatory obligations.
• Advising Sky, a leading broadband provider and mobile operator, on ensuring compliance with regulatory obligations.
• Advising Virgin Media / Liberty Global, a leading broadband and mobile operator, on ensuring compliance with regulatory obligations.
• Advising Speed Fibre Group, operator of a State-sponsored fibre network and commercial wholesale and retail broadband businesses, on ensuring compliance with regulatory obligations.
• Advising a spacecraft manufacturer on the Irish, EU and US regulatory and licencing requirements surrounding the launch of its latest satellite constellation as well as advising on the launch of its satellite broadband services in Ireland and elsewhere in the EU.
• Advising manufacturers of high-performance luxury cars on all its telecoms and infrastructure projects in Ireland including innovative in-built vehicle technologies and products such as emergency calling services and electronic SIM cards.
• Advising all clients on the implementation and implications of fundamentally important EU laws including the Roaming Regulation, the European Electronic Communications Code and the Network and Information Systems 2.0 Directive.
• Advising all clients on interacting with the licensing regime in Ireland, including in respect of regulatory obligations under ComReg's General Authorisation (GA), Fixed Wireless Access Local Area (FWALA), Premium Rate Service (PRS) and other sector specific licences.

Regulatory Appeals and Enforcement

• Advising Three on its Court challenge of ComReg's 5G spectrum auction rules (which ComReg remarked as being "the most important decision it has ever made"), including obtaining a Court ordered halt ('stay') to the auction process.
• Advising Sky and Vodafone as notice parties in an appeal of ComReg's most recent wholesale broadband access price control decision, including successfully resisting an application to 'stay' the regulatory decision being challenged pending determination of the appeal.
• Advising Virgin Media on its defence of ComReg's High Court litigation and other enforcement actions relating to its terms and conditions for contract cancellation.

Transactions

• Advising Cellnex on the sale of its Irish towers business to Phoenix, involving a Phase 2 review by the Irish competition authority.
• Advising AMP Capital on its acquisition of enet in a two-stage process involving separate transactions.
• Advising the Speed Fibre Group on the acquisition of Magnet+ and the restructuring of the group.
• Advising Three on its acquisition of communications provider Telefónica Ireland / O2 Ireland, following a Phase 2 competition law investigation by the European Commission.
• Fibre Roll-Out Joint Ventures: Advising a number of bidders on the joint venture acquisition of eir's fibre business and the successful bidder in the acquisition of National Broadband Ireland.
• Telecoms Towers Spin-Outs: Advising Three on the sale of its Irish towers business and on putting in place commercial agreements with the new owner; advising bidders for the Vantage Towers Irish business; advising bidders and sellers of the Towercom Irish towers business.
• Advising MVNOs, including Postfone, on putting in place MVNO agreements with network operators.
• Advising Sky and ViacomCBS on obtaining Irish media merger approval for the joint venture launch of Paramount+ in Europe.

"The team at Matheson is always available at short notice and have a great understanding of time pressures. From a client perspective, the advice is always clear, succinct and addresses the points fully.".
Telecoms: The European Legal 500, 2023

"The wonderful team at Matheson brings something specific to the table, and the team grew organically according to the client’s unique needs and is highly customised to those needs. Matheson has proved outstanding in providing just the right level of resources, which is often a challenge. Kate McKenna’s initial guidance is substantive and sound. She is fantastic at contextualising a fast-changing issue in terms of general regulation and specific technical-legal realities. Simon Shinkwin has a similar ability to digest significant amounts of information, interpret a variety of data, listen carefully to clients’ questions and opinions, provide highly trustworthy feedback on those questions and opinions, and collate various documents and resources to our strategic advantage".
Telecoms: The European Legal 500, 2023

"An excellent team – consistently impresses both in terms of quality of legal advice and in its delivery. The team understand the commercial and business practicalities faced by telecoms and tailor their advice to meet clients’ needs. Their ways of working are top quality and always available, even on short notice to assist with legal /regulatory queries. They are flexible and practical and demonstrate excellent commercial and telecoms industry knowledge. They are very responsive to emails and calls and offer great support.’".
Telecoms: The European Legal 500, 2023

Ranked Tier 1
Telecoms: The European Legal 500, 2022

Ranked Tier 1
TMT Media: Chambers Europe, 2022

"Apart from their depth of knowledge and experience, Matheson’s telecoms team bring a high degree of emotional intelligence to their work. I cannot recommend them highly enough."
Telecoms: The European Legal 500, 2022

"The telecoms team have supported our business on a number of large and complex transactions and have proven that they have the knowledge and the resources to deliver quality results on time and to a high standard in time-critical situations."
Telecoms: The European Legal 500, 2022