Gogga Tracking Solutions and former investor, Vodacom, will square off on Monday at the Competition Tribunal.
The small Internet reseller is asking the tribunal to order Vodacom to sell it data at its retail rate, or 19c per MB, saying it is now paying 60c per MB. It is also asking the competition body to stop Vodacom from demanding payment for past accounts, which it says were never incurred.
Vodacom says both companies have now filed all the papers the Competition Tribunal needs to hear the case, and Vodacom is preparing to face the company on Monday.
SA's largest mobile operator was one of the initial investors in Gogga, which entered into Vodacom's venture arms. The company exchanged access to marketing funds and office housing for a stake in its business.
Stopped from starting
Gogga is now saying that Vodacom has been trying to push it out of the market it was building towards, using tactics to prevent Gogga from accessing customers.
According to Gogga, Vodacom unilaterally stopped a bulk purchasing model in July 2007, claiming that the model was disrupting the market and was a misuse of Vodacom's available products. The small business says Vodacom told it that the product was losing money for Vodacom and had to be stopped.
The company says Vodacom's behaviour has damaged its business and it is now taking the matter to the competition authorities. It is understood that the competition action was intended to go ahead last year, however, Gogga decided not to proceed with the case then.
No way
Vodacom says the matter is not a competition issue, but a simple case of Gogga not paying its accounts and claiming anti-competitive behaviour.
According to the mobile operator's competition submission, Gogga's deal with Vodacom was suspended because the company did not pay the accounts it was supposed to. Vodacom also says Gogga was never prevented from buying wholesale products from other licensed network suppliers such as Telkom, Neotel, Sentech, iBurst, MTN and Cell C.
The mobile operator says despite its investment in Gogga, the small business has been accumulating debt for years. Vodacom says in January last year, it agreed to provide bridging finance to the company, which it squandered through the year, digging a deeper debt hole for itself.
Vodacom will present similar arguments in its defence to the tribunal next week.
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