Telkom have swept aside a Supreme Court challenge from ZTE Mzansi and will continue rolling out its fixed-line broadband expansion.
ZTE Mzansi had challenged the legality of Telkom’s granting of a reported ZAR13 billion (US$1.4 billion) tender to Alcatel-Lucent Technologies and Huawei to build new infrastructure and in March 2012 part state-owned telecommunications company were halted from continuing the rollout by the courts until the matter was resolved.
In May last year however, Telkom were able to resume work.
Telkom’s appeal has now been upheld however and Nombulelo Moholi, Telkom Group chief executive, said: “We had no doubt that Telkom’s Procurement Policy and Procedures would not be found wanting.
“Telkom is pleased that the deployment of the MSAN and the rollout of the higher speed broadband project has overcome a potential obstacle and can now continue unabated.”
The relevant tender was for the provision of Multi Service Access Nodes (MSANs), which have enabled Telkom to roll out their 20Mbps and 40Mbps services this month.
