Wireless Business Solutions (WBS) says it wants a councillor from Independent Communication Authority of South Africa (ICASA), Joseph Lebooa taken off the investigation into the licence fees the service provider's provider owes to ICASA.
This is the second time that the broadband provider has requested that Lebooa removed from the ICASA investigation stating that he is "clearly conflicted."
The first request followed newspaper reports that Lebooa was hijacked and beaten by assailants sent by WBS to force him to stop his investigation into WBS. The company has repeatedly denied these reports.
The iBurst and Broadlink parent company says in a statement that ICASA cannot continue its investigation in good faith.
"What concerns us greatly now though is that to continue to allow this person that harbours such acrimonious feelings towards the company and who has made such serious criminal allegations against WBS to be in charge of reaching a settlement with us, shows a serious discord of action," says WBS.
WBS further adds that it had seen Lebooa's statement to the police following the hijacking and that his comments were conflicting to the media reports. "When reading his statement and comparing it with his references to the incident in the media it is clear that a huge amount of embellishment and false accusation has made its way into his accounts of the incident between the time of its occurrence to date."
Earlier this month, ICASA investigators raided the WBS offices and confiscated radio transmission equipment, which led to disruptions of iBurst and Broadlink services to a number of its subscribers.
WBS took the matter to the South Gauteng High Court and got an interdict against ICASA to return all seized equipment and preventing the authority from interfering with WBS providing services to its clients.
WBS and ICASA have been involved in a dispute over payments the broadband provider owes to ICASA. Last year WBS owed ICASA some R24 million for microwave links it had set up without informing the regulator. At that stage, it had applied for some of the links to be licenced, but ICASA refused to sanction the use of spectrum until WBS paid the outstanding fees.
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