HONIARA (Pacnews) — Solomon Telekom says it has obtained an injunction against Digicel Pacific, restraining it from providing any telecommunication services including mobile phone services.
This is until the Solomon Islands High Court rules on the validity of Telekom’s exclusive license.
Digicel has also been restrained from doing anything under an experimental license purportedly granted by Robert Bokelema from the Telecommunications Authority. It includes seeking any renewal or applying for any new telecommunications license until the court decision.
Earlier last year, Bokelema wrote to Telekom, threatening to amend its license to remove the exclusivity provisions and to grant a license for mobile services to a competitor Digicel.
Telekom has commenced the court proceedings to protect its license and to prohibit Bokelema from issuing any license to a competitor of Telekom. It argues that Bokelema has no power to unilaterally amend the license or to grant a license to a competitor.
Telekom’s license has a number of provisions relating to its exclusive rights. Those rights are subject to a negotiated review between the government and Telekom scheduled for 2008.
However, Telekom has told the government and Bokelema that it is willing to participate in a genuine review now and that it would consider giving up its exclusive rights if the review led to a new governing act, an independent regulatory authority in place of the Telecommunications Authority, a level playing field for all service providers and guaranteed financial support for the development and maintenance of rural telephone services.
Without those changes in place, Telekom said that it has no choice but to protect its exclusive rights as the only means to fund its provision and continuing development of services outside the capital, Honiara.
Telekom said that all telephone services outside of Honiara are operated at a loss and, if it has to share the Honiara market with competitors who will only be interested in profitable services before the necessary review then Telekom would have to stop providing services outside Honiara.