The Competition Appeal Court will on Friday hear South African telecommunications giant Telkom’s appeal against the Competition Tribunal’s procedural decision which allowed private company Orion Cellular access to certain documents which Telkom wanted to restrict only to their legal representatives.
The appeal against this judgement will be heard in Cape Town. In June, the judge requested that the case be postponed to allow the process more time to collate more evidence.
In April the Competition Commission issued a notice of non-referral. Non-referral means that there was either no competition, or the evidence was insufficient to refer it to the tribunal. This was subsequently overturned.
Orion is a provider of cellular services, particularly the least-cost routing system for cellular-to-cellular telephone calls. Orion was allowed to inspect the agreements Telkom had with Standard Bank and Edgars Consolidated Stores to prepare its case in the main application.
However, Telkom argued in the appeal that the tribunal’s decision did not adequately protect its confidential information.
In the main application, Orion alleged that Telkom was engaging in a campaign of predatory activities to exclude Orion from the market.
It alleged that following the introduction of its Premicell technology, Telkom negotiated agreements with two of its major customers — Standard Bank and Edcon — and therefore undercut Orion and induced its customers to choose Telkom over it.
Premicell technology has reduced the costs of landline to cellular telephony. – I-Net Bridge