The year-long legal dispute between ZTE Mzansi and Telkom was concluded today, with the Supreme Court of Appeal ruling in favour of Telkom.
This comes a year after Telkom was interdicted from implementing the tender for Multi Services Access Node (MSAN) provision and concluding any service level agreement with the successful bidders, pending the outcome of an arbitration between Telkom and ZTE Mzansi.
The tender was awarded to Huawei and Alcatel-Lucent in November 2011. However, neither the South African Communications Union (SACU) nor losing bidder ZTE Mzansi were happy with the company's network transformation plans.
Losing bidder ZTE Mzansi (40%-owned by China-based ZTE) went to the North Gauteng High Court over the Telkom deal, because it believed Telkom's bidding process was not fair and the company's tender was never properly considered, despite complying with all of Telkom's requirements, including empowerment and technical capability.
At the time, SACU said it would meet with Telkom and "request a probe into [the] tender process, as well as the lack of transparency".
In January 2012, ZTE served an application upon Telkom seeking to restrain the company from implementing the tender in terms of an interim interdict. Telkom and Alcatel-Lucent opposed the application.
Four months later, the North Gauteng High Court granted Telkom leave to appeal against the interdict.
The Supreme Court of Appeal held that it would be an unbusinesslike construction if Telkom was obliged to resolve disputes with multiple bidders by arbitration with varying awards before it could safely implement an award.
Today the Supreme Court of Appeal upheld Telkom's procurement policy when it set aside the North Gauteng High Court's interim interdict against the company. The appeal was upheld with costs.
Telkom CEO Nombulelo "Pinky" Moholi says the organisation was confident in its procurement policy and procedures all along. "Telkom is pleased that the deployment of the MSAN and the rollout of the higher speed broadband project has overcome a potential obstacle and can now continue unabated."
Telkom says ZTE Mzansi's bid for its July 2011 tender for the provision of MSANs was not shortlisted because it "failed to meet certain critical technical criteria during the evaluation process".
Telkom's MSAN units were set up to deliver "higher speed broadband and fibre to the curb and/or premises". Earlier this month, Telkom launched DSL up to 20Mbps and 40Mbps to the market.
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