Search This Blog

Monday, June 7, 2021

Liquid Telecom loses Bid for Kenya Under-Sea Cable License


Tier-1 telco, Liquid (formerly KDN), has lost a bid to acquire a submarine cable landing license after the Communications Tribunal threw out its appeal against an earlier decision by the Communications Authority to deny it the license.

Liquid, part of a pan-African group, had applied for the SLCC license to terminate a cable originating from Pakistan and co-owned by a subsidiary of Chinese Huawei group.

The Communications and Media Appeals Tribunal, in denying its appeal, found that Liquid filed the appeal months later than the law required and that the same seemed to be an afterthought.

The Tribunal chair Rosemary Wacera Kuria, found that Liquid did not provide sufficient reasons for not filing the appeal on time and that it had initiated other license applications before it decided to file the appeal.

Kenya has three SCLL holders: Seacom, TEAMS and EASSY. Mr. Stephen Kiptinness, representing Liquid, was unable to convince the tribunal that the company would suffer any commercial loss nor that the matter would result in injustice.

Faith Wamuyu, counsel for the Authority, had argued that Liquid, by delaying to file its appeal, was misusing the court process.

No comments:

Post a Comment