{"id":35046,"date":"2013-04-07T21:01:40","date_gmt":"2013-04-07T19:01:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=35046"},"modified":"2013-04-08T09:39:34","modified_gmt":"2013-04-08T07:39:34","slug":"accusations-fly-in-iburst-icasa-battle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/telecommunications\/35046\/accusations-fly-in-iburst-icasa-battle\/","title":{"rendered":"Accusations fly in iBurst, ICASA battle"},"content":{"rendered":"

iBurst<\/a> said that it expects all of its business support services to be restored by tomorrow. This follows the return of the company\u2019s equipment by the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA<\/a>) after the issuing of an interdict by the South Gauteng High Court against the Regulator on Friday.<\/p>\n

The disruption of iBurst services to a number of its subscribers began on Wednesday when inspectors from ICASA entered the premises of WBS<\/a> and seized radio transmission equipment without prior notice.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey also caused serious damage at the company\u2019s data centre, where they vandalized equipment, ripping off servers and router switches worth millions of Rands, including the iBurst SMS switch which sends over 5 million SMS\u2019s a day,\u201d said iBurst.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is despite the fact that the data centre was not a part of their search and seizure warrant,\u201d iBurst highlighted.<\/p>\n

iBurst CEO Thami Mtshali<\/a> said he is extremely dismayed by this malicious damage to iBurst property that was outside of the regulator\u2019s search and seizure warrant.<\/p>\n

ICASA\u00a0in contempt of court, said iBurst<\/h3>\n

iBurst said that the seized equipment was returned 3 hours later than the issued deadline, meaning that the regulator acted in contempt of court.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Interdict also prevents ICASA from interfering with the provision of services by iBurst, pending an application by iBurst parent company Wireless Business Solutions (WBS) to declare that it is in possession of lawful licences,\u201d iBurst said in a press statement.<\/p>\n

iBurst CEO Thami Mtshali said he welcomed the interdict as it ensures no further disruptions to services related to WBS\u2019s ongoing negotiations with ICASA.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur biggest concern has been the impact of all of this on our customers and the services that we provide them with. We apologize for any inconvenience that this may have caused and want to assure our customers that there won\u2019t be any further disruption to their services related to this matter,\u201d said Mtshali.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey should continue to expect the high quality of service that we have been providing them with thus far.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ongoing negotiations<\/h3>\n

iBurst said that WBS and ICASA are currently engaged in negotiations to determine the amount owing to the regulator in spectrum licence fees.<\/p>\n

\u201cTestament to these ongoing negotiations is a letter sent to the company by the ICASA council, signed by the chairman Stephen Mncube<\/a> on the 11th of March stating that the regulator would revert to iBurst about a negotiated settlement following the \u2018conclusion of our investigations regarding your outstanding licence fees\u2019,\u201d said iBurst.<\/p>\n

According to iBurst the letter was sent 4 days after a search and seizure warrant was granted to the ICASA on the 7th of March. \u201cThe raids on the company however occurred despite this,\u201d said iBurst.<\/p>\n

Mtshali said that over 70 engineers have been working tirelessly over the weekend with their overseas technical partners to make sure that services to iBurst\u2019s corporate and consumer customers are restored.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe interdict now ensures that the regulator cannot cause any further interruptions in services without the dispute first being resolved,\u201d said Mtshali.<\/p>\n

More iBurst and ICASA news<\/h3>\n

iBurst wins court interdict against ICASA<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

ICASA breaks silence on iBurst equipment seizure<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

iBurst network outage update<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Truth behind iBurst network problems<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Icasa councillor hijacked, beaten, threatened because of WBS-iBurst investigation: report<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

iBurst slates ICASA for damaging equipment and for acting outside of its court order<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":34908,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[26,75,36,1772],"class_list":["post-35046","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-telecommunications","tag-headline","tag-iburst","tag-icasa","tag-thami-mtshali"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35046","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35046"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35046\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35048,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35046\/revisions\/35048"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}