Commercial Court Division
This to my mind means that one must look to this Agreement to establish what rate
should be applied between MTN and UTL unless amended pursuant to Article 21 of
the Interconnection Agreement.
Any such amendment is subject to mutual
negotiation after receipt of a 30 day notice to vary the agreement.
The applicable rate.
The parties are not agreed on the applicable rate on calls to Gemtel from MTN on the
+256 477 xxx numbers. Counsel for MTN summarized the disagreement well. He
submitted that the gist of UTL’s argument was that traffic originating from the MTN
network destined for code +256 477 xxx did not terminate on the UTL network but
the net work of Gemtel in Southern Sudan. This issue in the eyes of the court is a
technical one.
The expert evidence on the issue.
Expert witness for MTN PW2 is a Telecom Consultant (a holder of an MSC in Electrical
Engineering plus has a Tele-traffic post graduate certificate) and worked for eight
years with the Nigeria Communications Commission and did consulting work with ITU.
She testified that a call made from MTN to +256 477 xxx would be a local call. To my
mind, her testimony boiled down to one point that is code +256 477 xxx was a
Ugandan code belonging to UTL and not Gemtel. Gemtel in Southern Sudan had no
other code for itself it had to use the UTL network.
The evidence of PW1 did not vary much from that of PW2. PW1 is a lawyer with a
Masters Degree in Telecommunications and IT.
For UTL, the only witness was DW1 a lawyer with a Masters of Laws Degree. DW1
testified at length how calls from MTN to Gemtel through code +256 477 xxx had to
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