The court ordered ICASA must return the communications equipment in an interdict on Friday, which was originally confiscated as part of its “national drive to recover all outstanding licence fees from electronic communications, broadcasting and postal licensees”.
WBS subsidiary iBurst accused ICASA of failing to return the equipment within the court’s deadline, as well as causing “malicious damage” to its property. The equipment seizure had led to extensive downtime on the networks of iBurst and its sister company Broadlink.
“The equipment was returned three hours later than the issued deadline, meaning that the regulator acted in contempt of court,” iBurst said in a statement.
Thami Mtshali, chief executive officer (CEO) at WBS and iBurst, said ICASA “caused serious damage at the company’s data centre, where they vandalised equipment, ripping off servers and router switches worth millions of rands, including the iBurst SMS switch, which sends over five million SMSes a day”.
“This is despite the fact that the data centre was not a part of their search and seizure warrant,” he said, accusing the regulator of “great negligence”.
He added the high court ruling “prevents ICASA from interfering with the provision of services by iBurst, pending an application by … WBS to declare that it is in possession of lawful licences”.
