Ecuador's Porta Calls for Arbitration in Dispute with Senatel

Ecuadorian mobile telephony operator Porta has called on the local chamber of commerce to arbitrate in a dispute between the company and the telecoms sector administrator Senatel regarding alleged non-fulfillment of its concession contract, local daily El Comercio reported.

Porta, which is a unit of Mexican mobile telephony giant América Móvil, reportedly said that calling for intervention from the chamber was a matter of procedure that is stipulated in its concession contract.

Porta's regulatory director Daniel Bernal was reported as saying that the company has also filed a counter lawsuit to that of Senatel's with a Guayaquil court.

Last week Senatel officially notified Porta that it had started proceedings to terminate the operator's concession contract.

The news came after telecoms supervisory body Suptel said in early November it was giving Porta a 30-day grace period to either present a plan aimed at solving technical problems that have arisen and offer compensation to its customers, or face losing its concession license.

Suptel has accused Porta of negligence regarding a blip in service that affected more than 6,000 subscribers on September 25 and said that the compensation offered by Porta was insufficient.

Porta offered not to charge its prepaid customers for any calls they made that day or any charges incurred in dropped calls.

On January 18 this year, a similar interruption occurred for which Porta was fined and told to take measures to prevent the same from happening again.

In related news, Porta said it has finalized compensation of its customers for incorrect tariff charges dating back to 1999, when Porta began charging clients per minute rather than per pulse.

The operator reportedly said that it had compensated customers for a total value of US$200mn in prepaid cards covering the period from October 2005 to October 2007.

Porta's concession contract is due to expire at the end of 2008. The operator ended September with 6.57mn subscribers.

Posted to the site on 22nd November 2007