Mislatel refutes Singson-led group’s allegation over contract breach

MISLATEL Consortium, the government’s declared provisional new major telco player after last week’s bidding, fired back at one of its competitors that sought to invalidate its win through a motion for reconsideration (MR) filed with the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC).
Mindanao Islamic Telephone Company, Inc. (Mislatel), the franchise holder representing the group of China Telecommunications Corp., Dennis A. Uy’s Udenna Corp. and its subsidiary Chelsea Logistics Holdings Corp., on Sunday issued a statement denying the claim of Sear Telecommunications Consortium that it has a live contract with the company.
“[T]he simple fact is that Mislatel has no contract with TierOne. What Mislatel had was a terminated contract with a company called DigiPhil that was meant for small projects… Moreover, the contract was nevertheless terminated on October 5,” it said.
Sear Telecommunications Consortium, led by TierOne Communications International, Inc. and former Ilocos Sur Gov. Luis C. Singson’s LCS Group of Companies (Sear-LCS-TierOne), had earlier cited Mislatel’s live contract with a member of its group, DigiPhil Technology, Inc.
The Sear consortium said in its MR that its partner DigiPhil reserves the right to Mislatel’s license as its “sole and exclusive partner,” citing exclusivity terms in their agreement.
But Mislatel distributed to reporters over the weekend a copy of the contract and a notice of termination of said contract. In the termination letter, Mislatel said it wants to end its deal with the company as its agreement doesn’t cover participation in the government’s third telco bidding.
“[I]t was never the intention nor the purpose of Mislatel to include the bid for the third telco as part of the agreement with DigiPhil,” Mislatel said in an Oct. 5 letter to the DigiPhil.
Although the signed contract stated “the parties are… contemplating in the future to include the provision of cellular mobile telephony…,” Mislatel said in its notice of contract termination the deal never mentioned participation in the third telco bidding specifically, thus to interpret “other authorizations” in the contract as such is a “fraudulent misrepresentation.”
Sear-LCS-TierOne said its agreement with Mislatel “included joining the NTC’s (new major player) selection process.” It is requesting the NTC to conduct a new bidding because of a “failure” in the process brought by Mislatel’s “fraudulent and obstructive practice.”
The Sear consortium was disqualified in last week’s auction for lack of a “participation security” worth P700 million. The bidding’s selection committee has three days to review the company’s MR.
Aside from Sear-LCS-TierOne, the selection committee is also set to review the MR of the other failed bidder, Philippine Telegraph and Telephone Corp. (PT&T), which was disqualified for lack of an NTC certification proving its 10-year experience as a telco provider in a national scale.
Should the selection committee grant any of the two group’s petitions and proceed to review their submissions, the commitments of Mislatel Consortium may be challenged, which won the bidding with 456.80 out of 500 points.
At stake for whoever will emerge successful by the end of the whole process is a certificate of public convenience and necessity (CPCN) valid for 15 years or the length of the franchise of a bidder, whichever is shorter; and radio frequency bands of 700 megahertz (MHz), 2100 MHz, 2000 MHz, 2.5 gigahertz (GHz), 3.3 GHz and 3.5 GHz.
The Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) earlier promised to have the third telco player before Christmas. — Denise A. Valdez