Maltacom and competition

The Times' leader yesterday was entitled End Of The Line For Telephone Monopoly. Maltacom would like to declare it is all for liberalisation and competition, and has no intention of dragging its feet. The company was, and still is, a key player in the telecoms sector, and contributes a lot towards opening up the market and ushering new, innovative services.

Evidence of this is the Go Mobile experience and the huge inroads made in the broadband sector. Both cases are examples of how Maltacom competes and manages to secure significant market share, with the resulting added value for customers both in terms of service quality and pricing. The offering of combined (or bundled) offers, such as broadband and TV, reaffirms our intention of being leaders in this sector and offering our customers the best services, at competitive prices.

Another example which demonstrates Maltacom's pro-active stance when being faced with competition is the Voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) service.

When several players were entering the market of low-cost international calling, Maltacom faced a huge threat - but decided to compete. Thanks to our excellent technical and business capabilities, we competed and launched the successful Ten21 service. Today, we are the leader in this market.

In the light of the claims and accusations made, Maltacom responded by demanding a level playing field for all operators. We continue to hope that the Malta Communications Authority will heed our constant requests for a situation that makes competition feasible and does not countenance advantages to any of the competing parties.

The main bone of contention has been the pricing of Melita's telephony service over the past months. The MCA had ruled Melita's pricing as irregularly cross-subsidised and the authority had ordered Melita to revise its rates - something which did not take place. Maltacom is asking for a guarantee of fair play to ensure that such abusive action is not repeated.

On the issue of interconnection, Maltacom and Melita have now trashed out all pending issues and the agreement has been signed. Hopefully, Melita will see our goodwill gesture and will enter into healthy competition with us on a level playing field for the benefit of all our customers.

In the case of Go Mobile, there were no major pending issues and the agreement was signed on September 29 - even though, to date, we are still waiting for Melita to open up the interconnection between its customers and Go Mobile customers.

As expressed by the company's chairman recently, "the MCA's recent decisions have been a cause for concern, as they do not take into account the macro-economic environment of this country. Such disregard to local realities is a serious cause for worry, and might prompt reconsideration of investment plans.

Moreover, such an eventuality would not be in our clients' interests and consequently will cause harm to the interests of our shareholders and to those of our people.

"We have expressed these concerns to the MCA, and we continue to maintain the hope that they will see the logic in our position."

On the issue of monopoly, we agree with what was said in the editorial that Melita is a monopoly in its cable TV service. One has to add also that in the case of broadband, Melita is a dominant player - and, yet, the MCA never enforced any regulatory obligations on it.

Hence, we demand fair play and a level playing field, for the benefit of all customers and stakeholders.

Mr Aloisio is head of communications and public affairs at Maltacom plc.