Huge Group wins interdict against Cell C in airtime battle

Huge Group said on Tuesday that it has won an interdict in a legal dispute between two of its subsidiaries and Cell C, apparently preventing the mobile operator from terminating its services as planned at the end of this month.

The court upheld the application, in which it sought the urgent interdict preventing Cell C from terminating Huge Cellular’s access to the operator’s network, Huge Group said in a stock exchange news service (Sens) announcement to shareholders.

TechCentral first reported on the dispute earlier this month, prompting Huge Group to issue an earlier Sens statement about the court action.

Cell C disputed that Huge Group subsidiaries Huge Cellular and Huge Telecom were entitled to urgent relief to prevent Cell C from suspending services on 28 February that could cut off telephone services to 16 000 Huge clients.

In a replying affidavit filed at the high court in Johannesburg, Cell C Service Provider Company (Cell C SP) disputed the claim by Huge that it was entitled to an accumulated “shortfall” of airtime minutes up to February 2022. Huge said this amount was likely to be R50-million on the date of the termination of the agreement.

In its founding affidavit, Huge warned that 16 000 corporate and small and medium enterprises would have their services cut off if Cell C did not honour the agreement.

It said, too, that Huge Group and Huge Telecom “could suffer enormous reputational damage” if the lines were summarily disconnected with no alternative in place.

Responding to the judgment, Cell C said the court ordered the parties to take the matter to arbitration, which will now happen. — (c) 2019 NewsCentral Media