{"id":37416,"date":"2013-05-08T14:50:13","date_gmt":"2013-05-08T12:50:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=37416"},"modified":"2013-05-09T08:41:57","modified_gmt":"2013-05-09T06:41:57","slug":"we-dont-owe-icasa-r107-3m-cell-c","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/mobile\/37416\/we-dont-owe-icasa-r107-3m-cell-c\/","title":{"rendered":"We don’t owe Icasa R107m: Cell C"},"content":{"rendered":"

South Africa’s third mobile operator Cell C<\/a> has rejected claims that it owes the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa<\/a>\u00a0R107.3 million in\u00a0outstanding licence fees, saying further that the allegations have damaged its reputation.<\/p>\n

This follows\u00a0comments made in Parliament on 30 April 2013 by Shadow Minister of Communications for the Democratic Alliance (DA<\/a>),\u00a0Marian Shinn<\/a>,\u00a0regarding outstanding licence fees owed to the watchdog\u00a0by companies and state departments, totaling\u00a0R501 million.<\/p>\n

Shinn wrote that five companies were involved in other electronic communication-related disputes – including\u00a0Cell C, who Shinn said owes R107,278,168 in disputes.<\/p>\n

“Cell C would like to set the record straight…Cell C has never been advised by Icasa that it owes R107.3 million or any other amount in outstanding licence fees and, accordingly, Cell C denies that it owes this amount,” the operator said.<\/p>\n

According to Cell C, the comments were made on the back of information provided to the Minister by Icasa.<\/p>\n

Cell C said that, following comments made in Parliament, it sent a letter to Icasa\u00a0on 2 May 2013 demanding urgent written confirmation of Icasa’s position and that Cell C is not in default of any licence fee obligations.<\/p>\n

“Icasa\u00a0has failed to respond as it appears to be unable to verify its own information,” the operator said.<\/p>\n

“Icasa’s failure to respond and set the record straight publicly is having a negative impact on Cell C’s reputation and leaves Cell C with no choice but to make its own public statement in this regard.<\/p>\n

“Cell C notes that in a similar vein, despite in February 2013 having announced that it would begin a market review related to the high cost to communicate, Icasa has failed to commence this review, and consumers and Cell C continue to be negatively impacted,” Cell C said said in a statement.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

According to Shinn, Icasa has come under pressure from the Auditor-General and parliament\u2019s portfolio committee on communications for its inadequate monitoring and accounting systems that have resulted in woefully inadequate collection of fees due for the application of and use of radio spectrum.<\/p>\n

\u201cLate last year, Icasa embarked on a vigorous audit of licensees and their use of spectrum,\u201d Shinn said.<\/p>\n

More on Cell C and Icasa<\/h3>\n

Icasa owed R500 million<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Accusations fly in iBurst, ICASA battle<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\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","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cell C has set the record straight on false information regarding outstanding licence fees, which it claims is damaging its reputation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":34900,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[42,26,36,2093],"class_list":["post-37416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mobile","tag-cell-c","tag-headline","tag-icasa","tag-marian-shinn"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37416","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\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37416"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37416\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37426,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37416\/revisions\/37426"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}