By Santhush Fernando
A case filed by firebrand leftist politician and Presidential Advisor Vasudeva Nanayakkara, along with Organisation of Professional Associations (OPA) to review OPA’s earlier fundamental rights petition to Sri Lanka’s Supreme Court, to reduce allegedly high telephone tariffs charged by local telecommunications operators, is to be taken up this week.
Nanayakkara speaking to The Nation said the public interest litigation challenging the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (TRC) tariff regime is to be called up within the course of this week.

“We (OPA) found out that they (telecom operators) charge exorbitant rates. Therefore, based on our findings, we proved that call charges can be reduced in a very big way during the previous court case. Based on it, we (OPA and TRC) came to an understanding and an agreement was reached,” Nanayakkara said.

“But that was distortedly presented to court and the judgement ultimately entered into was in contradiction with the very essence of the agreement reached. Our lawyers during the earlier trial presumed that there will be no foul play.”
In a Petition submitted on August 14, Nanayakkara averred that the TRC had misled the Court to agree on curtailed reduction of 9.03% instead of a 20-25% agreed with OPA. In fact the computed new tariff rates were higher than those of the pre-November 2007 rates, the Petitioner said.

Representations made by TRC during the earlier Supreme Court proceedings differed in substance, to what was agreed at joint OPA-TRC meetings, and so had led to the agreeing on settlement on a wrong tariff structure.
“OPA delegates and TRC officials agreed on certain terms in order to the settle the Sri Lanka Telecom (SLT) tariff structure matter amicably. However, the substance on what was agreed was not represented by the counsels appearing for TRC, mistakenly or otherwise, and thereby a wrong position was taken which had entered into the judgment of the same,” Vasudeva said.

Vasudeva in a letter to TRC Director General Priyantha Kariyapperuma – dated October 10, 2008, states that, “OPA’s experts in their representation made to the TRC, in or around March 2008, explained that the TRC’s tariff proposal recommended to the SC was “mathematically and technically flawed.”

TRC had not brought to the notice of the Court that the per-line operating costs of the SLT, since its privatisation in 1998, has been declining at around 15% per annum, the letter said. It had also provided misinformation, to conceal the urgent need arising from the above, to update the outdated X factor of price cap CPI – X. The X factor is not a one-time set value, and its regular revision is an essential requirement that underpins its core aim which is to sustain market competitiveness in the fact of advancing technology and declining costs, it added.

The abrupt suspension of this licence condition in 1997, on the unjust insistence of Nippon Telephone and Telegraph (NTT), at the time it entered into a joint agreement with SLT, which stalled reduction of tariffs, had not been informed to the Court. The TRC had not informed that it failed to revise Factor X in 2002, when the suspension was terminated in 2002 and the government took measures to revamp the market competitiveness.

An international telecommunication expert on grounds of anonymity told The Nation, that the present SLT tariff regime recommended by the TRC has resulted in extremely high telecom charges.
“Sri Lanka Telecom tariff structure is the benchmark for all other operators in setting prices. If SLT tariff is increased, all other operators will jack up their rates, and the vice versa is also true,” he said.

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