Digicel Trinidad and Tobago will be taking Telecommunication Services of Trinidad & Tobago (TSTT) and its directors to court over an alleged failure to implement a high court ruling.

On February 15, the court ruled that TSTT should provide a fixed amount of interconnection capacity to Digicel, to permit the free flow of calls between Digicel's mobile network and TSTT's fixed and mobile networks. To date, the company has failed to deliver fully.

"Digicel has been left with no choice but to issue contempt proceedings against TSTT and its board of directors for their refusal to abide by an order of the High Court to provide Digicel with additional interconnect capacity," said Niall Dorrian, Digicel's chief executive officer.

The contempt proceedings will be served on TSTT and its directors, namely Sam Martin, Rolf Balgobin, Kerwyn Garcia, Derwin Howell, Neil Parsanlal, Bernard Dulal-Whiteway, Christopher Hetherington, Leonardo De Barros and Mark McFee.

Digicel said that it has made several efforts to arrive at a reasonable interim solution so as to avoid taking the matter to court. According to Digicel, TSTT, through their legal advisers, has displayed an unwillingness to cooperate.

Call failures

Digicel began court proceedings against TSTT late last year, following extreme instances of call failures in Digicel traffic going across to TSTT's networks. In those proceedings, Digicel sought an order preventing the blocking of Digicel calls and a mandatory injunction compelling TSTT to provide adequate levels of interconnect capacity. On February 15, both injunctions were granted.