Ugly turn in Vodacom, WirelessG battle

WirelessG CEO Carel van der Merwe says Vodacom has “reached a state of total incompetence” and accuses the operator of not complying with the directives of the deputy judge-president.

Added by Duncan McLeod on 12 February 2013.
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Carel van der Merwe

Carel van der Merwe

The battle between WirelessG and Vodacom, which holds 26% of the specialist Wi-Fi provider, is getting uglier.

On Tuesday, WirelessG CEO Carel van der Merwe said in comments e-mailed to TechCentral that Vodacom had “reached a state of total incompetence” and said the mobile operator was “heading for a cultural crisis and suicide”.

Van der Merwe e-mailed the remarks after WirelessG’s attorneys issuing a letter to Vodacom’s legal team accusing the operator of failing to comply with “specific directives issued by deputy judge-president Willem van der Merwe”.

WirelessG has taken Vodacom to court, accusing the company of reneging on a shareholders’ agreement that grants it exclusivity over any Wi-Fi infrastructure the mobile operator wants to build.

Van der Merwe told TechCentral in January that Vodacom had begun to backtrack on the agreements between the parties after it realised that “data offloading” onto Wi-Fi from its mobile broadband network was becoming a significant strategic opportunity.

He claimed that Vodacom had held discussions with a number of WirelessG’s rivals in 2012 and also ran pilot Wi-Fi projects late last year without involving the company, in contravention of the shareholders’ agreement.

A letter from JJR Inc, which has been retained by WirelessG, to Cliff Dekker Hofmeyr, Vodacom’s legal representatives in the case, says the mobile operator’s group CEO Shameel Joosub failed to sign his answering affidavit. “The content thereof could, at this stage, be amended by him or parts thereof deleted or aspects inserted. Our client is severely prejudiced as a result of this,” the letter states.

It adds that Vodacom’s answering affidavit was not served on JJR Inc’s offices “as per the directive of the deputy judge-president”.

“We only extracts from your answering affidavit via e-mail on 11 February 2013. We record that we have up to now neither received your answering affidavit nor did you comply with the directive of the deputy judge-president.”

JJR Inc says in the letter that its client’s view is this is “another example” of Vodacom’s “attempts to unnecessarily delay the proceedings”.

In his comments e-mailed to TechCentral, Van der Merwe says: “They [Vodacom] renege on agreements and now even think they can operate above the law. They cannot execute their CEO’s instructions to execute a shareholders’ agreement [and] neither can they execute the directives provided by court to deliver their response in time and according to good practice.”

Vodacom spokesman Richard Boorman says Van der Merwe’s comments are “very much wide of the mark”.

“The matter is proceeding and we’re not going to get drawn into commenting on each stage of the legal process.”

Despite the growing animosity, Van der Merwe says he still hopes to reach a negotiated settlement with Vodacom when the two parties meet on 20 February.  — (c) 2013 NewsCentral Media

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  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Lloyd-Heath/652060909 Lloyd Heath

    Think its shocking WirelessG feel the need to air their dirty laundry to Tech Central.

  • Cedrik

    But every little company Vodacom does business with seems end up with a bum as sore as Pollsmoor prisoner – what are there ethics like? Judging from how they deal with me the customer very poor.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=527737873 Vusi Sibiya

    I do like WirelessG’s product offering and I think it has potential to make an impact in the mass market with the right strategy. I don’t think however, that TechCentral is the right platform to be addressing such issues with Vodacom and it’s not like WirelessG cannot be found to have also conducted themselves in a similar manner.

    The G-Connect Super Hotspot designed to easily deliver direct Internet access with upload and download speeds of 50 Mbps introduced to the Media at the FNB stadium for the rugby test between the Springboks and New Zealand on 6 October 2012 is a great service and the question that should be asked is whether this was done with Vodacom or as I believe to be the case, with MTN fibre support.

    Perhaps it would be better for WirelessG to offer Vodacom an amicable exit and look at positioning themselves in a way that will allow them to compete with other service providers working with all the telcos. They already having an In-flight offering with Vodacom on Mango and they can look at taking In-flight broadband to another airline with another telco.

  • ps246

    You would never have found out about this otherwise. It’s about time big companies realised that the media will prevent them from trying to hide their rot.

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