GROPPERA RADIO AG AND OTHERS v. SWITZERLAND JUDGMENT 8 the cable network. If it is highly unlikely that the broadcasts will be resumed, there is no need to examine the merits of the appeal. Groppera Radio AG claimed to have made all the arrangements necessary for restarting its broadcasts in the event of the present appeal’s being held to have a suspensive effect (or of its succeeding). That statement, however, was unsupported by any evidence, although the burden of proof is on the appellant in this regard and Groppera’s submission is open to serious doubt. The company claimed to have ceased its broadcasts - independently of the consequences of the station’s having been struck by lightning - because of the PTT’s ban on retransmission. Other reasons may have weighed more heavily, however. With the arrival of experimental local radio stations and a third frequency for Radio DRS [Direktion Radio und Fernsehen der deutschen und rätoromanischen Schweiz], the transmitter on the Pizzo Groppera had to face serious competition, including that from Radio 24; the transmitter’s survival is accordingly no doubt in jeopardy irrespective of the ban on retransmission. That being so, Groppera Radio AG’s gratuitous statement that it was ready to resume its activities is not sufficient to prove that the Maur community-antenna co-operative and its subscribers have a live interest in taking proceedings. It follows that there is no need to examine the merits of their appeal. The Court does not need to determine the question whether there might be a live interest if the transmitter resumed or had already resumed its broadcasts, which are incompatible with international telecommunications law - subject to any contrary decision by the Italian courts and, possibly, by an international court of arbitration. (b) For the same reasons there is no need to consider the merits of the appeal brought by Groppera Radio AG. The company cannot plausibly maintain that if its appeal succeeded, it would resume its activities - which have been made impossible, short of new investment, by a storm that occurred after the appeal was brought - and would, furthermore, have the financial means to do so. Moreover, this case is a wholly exceptional one. Transmitters which broadcast in contravention of national or international law cannot usually survive for long. Matters are different as regards the Pizzo Groppera transmitter only because proceedings are still pending in Italy and because hitherto none of the means of settling disputes provided for in Article 50 of the International Telecommunication Convention ... has been used. It is unlikely that a second case of this kind will arise, if only because of the doubtful profitability of such transmitters. There is therefore insufficient justification for determining, with an eye to the future, the issues raised by the case, some of which are extremely sensitive. In any case, even if it were to be held that Groppera Radio AG had a possible interest in taking proceedings, its claim to retransmit again, through the co-operative’s cable network, its probably unlawful ... broadcasts, after resuming them, would not deserve the law’s protection." Lastly, the court made an order for costs against Groppera Radio AG since its appeal could not succeed as the company had breached the law by attempting to circumvent a ban on retransmission that had been imposed by the PTT and that, moreover, did not concern it directly.