Maltacom seeks fair play assurance

Maltacom plc has called on the Malta Communications Authority to ensure it will be competing with Melita Cable on a level playing field.

Maltacom made the request in a counter protest filed in response to a judicial protest by Melita earlier this month.

Melita claimed that Maltacom, and its subsidiary Mobisle Communications Ltd, were excluding it from the fixed telephony market by refusing to sign an interconnect agreement.

It said the agreement, already discussed and drafted, would allow a subscriber of Melita's fixed telephony to contact and be contacted by a Maltacom and Mobisle (Go Mobile) subscriber.

The refusal to sign the agreement constituted an abuse of dominance in terms of the Competition Act and a European Community Treaty, Melita claimed.

Maltacom said the allegations that it had breached the law and the treaty, were unfounded.

It said Melita was factually incorrect when it claimed that the interconnect agreement had been agreed to and just had to be signed.

In reality, Maltacom said it was waiting for Melita to produce certain information and that a number of aspects still had to be discussed and ironed out - which meant a final agreement had not been reached.

Melita had also claimed that the period of negotiations had expired as 120 days had lapsed since the request was made for an interconnect agreement. But Maltacom said that on September 23 it had informed the MCA it had done everything within reason to conclude talks on the various aspects of the agreement. The 120 day period had been interrupted due to a shortcoming by Melita, it said.

Maltacom added that between September 6 and 12, several meetings were held during which Maltacom, Melita and the MCA tried to find a solution.

During a meeting on September 6 the two companies reached a compromise as to how they could tackle pending issues. But, in meetings that followed, the MCA seemed to withdraw its support towards such a solution.

Then, on September 12, the MCA asked Maltacom to present a document containing an account of its proposals towards the solution. This document was submitted on September 14 but the authority never got back to the company.

Maltacom was, therefore, requesting the authority to submit a reply to the document.

It also called on the MCA to provide a guarantee that it would ensure there would be a level playing field between it and Melita. This was because, over the past 14 months, Melita had acted illegally and abusively in providing its Hello telephone service, Maltacom said. In October 2005, the authority ordered Melita to revise its retail rates for this service.

But Melita never revised the rates and the authority never enforced its decision. This was of prejudice to Maltacom and the consumer.

Now Maltacom was asking for a guarantee of fair play to ensure that this abusive action is not repeated.

Lawyers Andrew Muscat and Noel Scerri signed the protest.