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Operator claims it has been given access to less than half the agreed number of phone masts.
3UK has filed a £167 million (€219.54 million) lawsuit against rival EE over a dispute stemming from their network-sharing agreement.
A This is Money report on Monday said that one of the conditions attached to the merger between Orange and T-Mobile that created EE was that it must provide 3UK with access to 3,000 phone masts.
According to the report, EE has provided access to just 1,301 sites. 3UK’s lawsuit claims that this has hampered its network rollout, causing it to lose £127.9 million so far, with expected further losses of £39 million.
"We strongly reject the allegations and we will contest them vigorously," said EE, in the This is Money report.
3UK has a longstanding network-sharing joint venture, MBNL, which was established with former EE parent T-Mobile in 2007, years before the creation of EE. The company currently operates more than 14,000 shared phone masts; that figure is expected to rise to 17,000 by 2017.
In February 2014, 3UK and EE struck a separate deal to share some of the costs of rolling out their 4G networks, specifically costs related to masts and transmission networks.
