LAWYERS representing the Office of Utilities Regulation (OUR), the Digicel phone company and Technology Minister Phillip Paulwell Monday agreed to defer a legal battle over the right to fix cellular phone rates to January 7 next year.

The matter, which had been scheduled to proceed before Supreme Court judge Roy Anderson in the Judicial Review Court, became litigious earlier this year when Digicel, the Irish company that set up operations in Jamaica last year, challenged a move by the OUR to determine its interconnection fees for calls made from a fixed (land) line to a mobile phone. The challenge took the form of a motion for court orders to forbid the OUR's action.

Last year February, the OUR issued a document detailing minimum rates chargeable by mobile service providers for interconnect charges and fixed-to-mobile retail prices. These prices equalled the retail rates for calls from the fixed network of Cable and Wireless Jamaica, which has until next year, the exclusive right to provide land lines.

The OUR's document had the effect of ensuring that neither Digicel nor the more recently arrived Centennial Jamaica mobile phone company could charge anything below what Cable and Wireless charged for calls made from its land lines to mobile phones.

The issue heated up earlier this year however, when Minister Paulwell issued the OUR with a directive to refrain from interfering with the pricing policies of Digicel. The directive, dated April 9, 2002, instructed the OUR "not to intervene in the mobile (cellular) market by setting rates, tariffs or price caps on the interconnection or retail charges made by any mobile competitor".

The OUR responded to this directive last month by filing a motion for a declaration that the ministerial directive was unlawful and should be voided because, among other things, it exceeded the discretion conferred on the minister under Section 6 of the Telecommunications Act of 2000.

The OUR's lawyers also argued that the minister, through his actions, failed to have due regard for the section of the Act which was designed to promote and protect the public's interest by promoting fair and open competition in the provision of specified services and telecommunications equipment.

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