An application has been filed with Sindh High Court to issue Contempt of Court notices to Mr. Lars Christian Iuel, CEO, Telenor Pakistan and Mr. Salman Malik, CEO, Telenor LDI Communications, a subsidiary of Telenor Pakistan, for exiting ICH when the court had directed all ICH players to maintain the status quo on ICH till further notice.
It merits mentioning here that Sindh High Court had issued an interim directive on January 27th, 2014 for maintaining the Status Quo of International Clearing House or ICH till any further notice.
A court order sent today (January 31st, 2014) to CEO, Telenor Pakistan and CEO of Telenor LDI Communication – copy of which is available with ProPakistani – said that both the individuals are required to appear in the court in person on February 4th, 2014 to submit their reply against the application filed by LDI operators.
It maybe recalled that Telenor – on January 29th, 2014 – announced that it exited ICH citing huge losses due to increased grey traffic and hence lesser revenues from LDI business.
In its press release – received by media on Jan 29th – Telenor maintained that it exited ICH on January 25th, 2014.
Our sources confirm that Telenor Pakistan was not happy the revenue share it was getting through ICH. Sources said that due to decrement in its revenues, Telenor had asked PTA and ICH consortium to compensate it through MTR-I (Mobile Termination Rate) of Rs. 1.20 per minute, which was never implemented and as a protest Telenor exited ICH.
Telenor said that it had communicated its concerns to PTA and Ministry of IT, well ahead of exiting ICH, but they were never addressed and it was left with no option but to leave ICH.
Amid opposition from CCP, ICH was implemented on October 1st, 2012 with a primary purpose of eliminating grey traffic. However, grey traffic only grew after ICH and legal international incoming traffic to Pakistan dropped from 1.9 billion minutes per month to mere 450 million minutes per month.
Interestingly, since ICH was formed on the direction of Pakistan Telecommunication Authority under the policy from Ministry of Information technology, it remains unclear if Telenor could exit ICH on its own without any approvals from PTA.
Interesting….
I believe that traffic has gone up to 550 Million minutes during Jan 2014…..
What a joke!!! Telenor is exiting a cartel and is being pursued in court for doing so. Telenor should take the crazy petitioners head on. Nobody can force Telenor to be part of the racket that is the ICH.
Bad evaluation on Telenor’s part. They clearly didn’t see this coming when they had happily jumped on to the ship. Bear the brunt now,
This is a pure example of greed. LDI operators don’t want to let the ICH go as this was only way of minting money from people of Pakistan (living abroad).
Telenor on the other hands looking ugly as it joined ICH (an unpopular regime) in the start to make money but now cursing the same ICH as it didn’t suite well for them.
Telenor always presents itself as pro-policy and pro-regulations company and that was the case here till they decided to exit due to “revenue loss”-you call ICH good or bad policy but no body can exit/get self-acquired exemption from any Government policy/regime without proper permission, especially when it is made through consensus.
The issue is the lack of sensitivity on the side of policy maker and regulator who make them frustrated by not giving them their right of MTR-I (Revenue stream for mobile operators for eliminating grey traffic that was part of the overall ICH policy). In any case, Telenor did not clarified what revenue stream is lost that present their case in terms of “revenue loss to Telenor only”-something, in actual, the revenue not realised by all the mobile operators due to non-determination of MTR-I and hence, could not be appreciated. ironically, Government representatives has neither received a letter from any copmany nor they read news so they are inable to respond. Someone has to shake up all so that sanity may prevail.
JAGO before industry gets instable just few months before the NEXT GENERATION FREQUENCY AUCTION
So strange, group of thieves asking through high Court to prevent a former thieve from leaving them!! How funny and at the same time tragic.
Lars should be removed as CEO from Telenor