AT&T ready to file Telkom court order

Johannesburg, 10 Jul 2002

Lawyers acting for AT&T could file for a court order against Telkom as early as today, the company said this morning.

AT&T said yesterday it would turn to the courts to compel Telkom to comply with a ruling made in June by ICASA, the Independent Communications Authority of SA.

"We are talking hours to a day, that kind of timeframe," says local AT&T MD Peter Davies. "Our legal team is doing this as we speak."

In 2000, Telkom complained to ICASA that AT&T was providing services over which Telkom had been granted exclusivity. AT&T lodged a counter-claim, saying Telkom was illegally withholding infrastructure from it. Under local law the company is compelled to source infrastructure from Telkom on top of which it can provide value-added network services.

In its ruling ICASA completely vindicated AT&T, saying it had done nothing illegal, and pointed out faulty logic in the Telkom complaint.

But AT&T says Telkom has effectively ignored the ruling and is still refusing to provide it with infrastructure despite repeated requests.

"We are asking the courts to enforce the law and the ruling made by the regulator," Davies says. "We are asking for specific [data] lines to be installed."

He is cautious on when such a court order may be granted, saying it depends "on Telkom`s next chess move", but believes it should by rights be a short process resulting in an order that the services be provided within seven days.

"We have as many smart lawyers as they have," he says. He is also confident that Telkom has lost the moral high ground on the issue and that any delay it introduces will be out of "sheer bloody-mindedness".

If AT&T succeeds, it could open the door to something fellow value-added network service providers have been after for a long time: the right to have data lines for customers ordered, and billed, in the names of their companies.

"At the moment Telkom only allows customers to put in lines to us," says Davies. "This means it knows every customer I have and where the infrastructure is going. It can, and has, used this in an anti-competitive manner."

Telkom provides similar network services directly to companies.

This is also at the root of a complaint that a number of service providers lodged with the Competition Commission against Telkom.

Telkom says it will officially respond to the AT&T action once it has had time to consider it, but has reiterated that it is looking at the possibility of taking the original ICASA ruling under review.