Derek Achong

Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of T&T (TSTT) and its in­ter­net ser­vice provider sub­sidiary Am­plia have tak­en their le­gal bat­tle, over be­ing forced to pay over $26.4 mil­lion to a na­tion­al fund to de­vel­op in­ter­net con­nec­tiv­i­ty in rur­al com­mu­ni­ties, to the Privy Coun­cil.

The com­pa­ny’s de­ci­sion to file a fi­nal ap­peal over a pre­lim­i­nary is­sue in the case against the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty of T&T (TATT) was an­nounced as it came up for hear­ing be­fore Jus­tice Car­ol Gob­in, yes­ter­day morn­ing.

Jus­tice Gob­in ad­journed the case to May to give the Privy Coun­cil time to weigh in on the case and ul­ti­mate­ly de­cide its fu­ture.

In the ap­peal, the com­pa­nies are seek­ing to chal­lenge a de­ci­sion of the Court of Ap­peal to re­in­state TATT’s case in Ju­ly, last year.

Ac­cord­ing to the ev­i­dence in the case, in March 2021, TATT brought the law­suit against TSTT and Am­plia seek­ing to re­cov­er their un­paid con­tri­bu­tions to Uni­ver­sal Ser­vice Fund (USF), which stood at over $26.4 mil­lion at the time.

TSTT brought a pre­lim­i­nary chal­lenge to the law­suit as it claimed that TATT could not bring lit­i­ga­tion to re­cov­er the debt as it suf­fered no loss or dam­age.

The ma­jor­i­ty State-owned com­pa­ny claimed that un­der the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Act, which es­tab­lished TATT and the USF, TATT could on­ly seek to en­force com­pli­ance by ei­ther ad­vis­ing the Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter to sus­pend or re­voke its con­ces­sion or by ini­ti­at­ing crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings.

De­liv­er­ing a pre­lim­i­nary rul­ing on Feb­ru­ary 3, last year, Jus­tice Gob­in up­held the chal­lenge and struck out the law­suit as she ruled that she did not have the ju­ris­dic­tion to hear it.

The Court of Ap­peal even­tu­al­ly ruled that Jus­tice Gob­in was wrong to do so as TATT had no rem­e­dy un­der the leg­is­la­tion to com­pel com­pli­ance from a con­ces­sion­aire.

In No­vem­ber, last year, the Court of Ap­peal re­fused the com­pa­nies leave to pur­sue a fi­nal ap­peal be­fore the Privy Coun­cil.

Jus­tice Gre­go­ry Smith, who de­liv­ered the pan­el’s de­ci­sion on con­di­tion­al leave, point­ed out that the dis­pute be­tween the par­ties was not of gen­er­al or pub­lic im­por­tance.

He not­ed that while TSTT and Am­plia chal­lenged their pur­port­ed oblig­a­tion to make con­tri­bu­tions to the fund, oth­er telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions providers, who al­so hold con­ces­sions from TATT, did not join with the com­pa­nies in tak­ing the po­si­tion and have made their re­quired con­tri­bu­tions.

The Court of Ap­peal’s de­ci­sion on the is­sue did not leave the com­pa­nies with­out a life­line to con­tin­ue their le­gal chal­lenge as they de­cid­ed to ap­ply di­rect­ly to the Privy Coun­cil for spe­cial leave to pur­sue the ap­peal.

TATT was rep­re­sent­ed by Deb­o­rah Peake, SC, Ravi Heffes-Doon, and Ra­jesh Ra­moutar, while Mar­tin Daly, SC, and Son­nel David-Longe rep­re­sent­ed the com­pa­nies.