Cell C happy with Competition Commission decision
The decision came at the back of a complaint lodged by Cell C to the Commission on price discrimination back in April 2005. Cell C said that its submission was that MTN is abusing its dominant position in the market, and it is utilizing its muscle to harm Cell C’s bottom-line by challenging its Community Service Telephones (CST) roll-out.
“This is being done by withholding both commercial and CST interconnection fees due to Cell C – while at the same time not taking similar action against Vodacom’s CST rollout which mirrors Cell C’s own CST roll-out. Notwithstanding that, MTN continued to pay Vodacom interconnection fees due it,” Cell C said.
“As part of Cell C’s license obligations, amongst other things, we were required to install 52, 000 Community Service Telephony (CST) lines in under-serviced areas. These areas were defined broadly as those having less than 10% fixed line penetration as approved for in our license.”
“We then took this definition to the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) which mapped these areas. The resultant maps are endorsed by ICASA and we roll-out our CST network in these regions in accordance with this mapped information.” said Zeona Motshabi, Chief Corporate Officer at Cell C.
Added Motshabi: “We believe that we performed everything in our power to ensure that our roll-out is in line with our license obligation”
“We have always been confident that the Competition Commission would rule in the interest of fair competition.” she concluded
Cell C has to-date rolled out over 100,000 CSTs in under-serviced areas. More than 8 000 entrepreneurs have been created who bill monthly earnings of more than R32 million.
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