Royal Court upholds JT appeal

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JT welcomes the decision by Jersey’s Royal Court to instruct the regulator to reconsider how the Island’s fixed-line telecoms network should be opened up to competition.

The Court has upheld JT’s appeal, and so quashed the relevant Final Notice issued by the Jersey Competition Regulatory Authority (JCRA). Under the terms of that Notice, JT was required to bring in what’s known as a ‘Wholesale Line Rental’ product by 7^th November 2013. This would allow other operators to lease fixed lines from JT, so that they could resell them to their customers.

The Court found that the JCRA hadn’t followed a fair process in reaching its decision, and had imposed a timescale for JT to comply which was too short.

Commenting on the decision, JT’s Corporate Affairs Director, Daragh McDermott said:

‘The decision is a crucially important one in that it will ensure representations made by JT are required to be properly considered in the JCRA's decision making process.

Contrary to statements made by our competitors, this issue was never simply about opening up the fixed-line network to competition; it was always about proper decision making by the regulator which fully takes into account the views of JT.

We just didn’t believe that our arguments were being properly handled on many significant points. Given the importance of this issue, and the scale of the potential fine for not complying, we had no alternative but to ask the Court to intervene.

That has now been done, and we welcome the Court’s view. Should the JCRA wish to go ahead with wholesale line rental, then JT will work with them to ensure that a workable and achievable plan is put in place.

Finally, we are entirely in agreement with the Royal Court when it comments on the costs of this Appeal. Even though the JCRA has now made a very significant contribution to covering JT’s legal costs, it remains the case that had JT’s views been properly taken into account, this whole action could have been avoided.’