The Department of Communications says it will press ahead with the planned announcement on the second national operator (SNO), despite legal action aimed at stopping it.
"We plan to go ahead with the announcement on Friday, 17 September. However, we have to still decide on how that announcement will take place," says the department`s media liaison officer, Donovan Cloete.
On Wednesday, Optis Telecommunications, one of the original bidders in the first SNO licence hearings two years ago, instituted legal action against the minister of communications, Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri, to delay the announcement, in order for a judicial review of the licence process to take place.
The judicial review was initiated - and then stopped - by Nexus, a black economic empowerment partner in the SNO consortium, as it objected to two previously rejected bidders, CommuniTel and Two Consortium, receiving stakes. Nexus originally contended that the licensing process was flawed.
The application was supposed to be heard in the Pretoria Supreme Court this morning.
Matsepe-Casaburri set Friday`s deadline in August, saying the announcement of the preferred licensee and the subsequent award by the Independent Communications Authority of SA would depend on the SNO`s business plan.
The minister is only due back in the country on 18 September, as she is attending the Universal Postal Service Conference in Bucharest, along with a number of her senior staff.
Deputy communications minister Roy Padayachie is in Grahamstown, attending the department`s Highway Africa media conference at Rhodes University. He is expected to be there until the weekend.
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