Robert Muleleki

ABT Telecoms has found itself besieged in the media following the awarding of numerous tenders to the company.

All of this started with the contract in Mpumalanga, where numerous articles were written by the City Press insinuating we were not deserving of the contract and that we were paid for not doing anything and that we were responsible for a government blackout.

Because of the contract, we were dragged to court by the previous company that held the contract. The company switched off its services, and numerous government sites, including hospitals, clinics, and police stations, were left without telecoms services.

This was while the company refused to hand over government numbers to us after their services were terminated. All of this was while we were involved in litigation with the company, as mentioned above.

It is important to note that ABT Telecoms submits proposals to both the private and public sectors in the normal course of doing business. ABT Telecoms conducts its business above board to solve societal problems, drive innovation, and achieve commercial success.

The refusal to do a handover severely impacted the services provided to the Mpumalanga Government as our client. The government and ABT Telecoms instituted legal proceedings against Kwa-Mahlaba Connect to force the latter to hand over telephone numbers to enable ABT to provide telecommunications services.

ABT Telecoms CEO Mr Thula Nkumane said the company managed the numbers, which have been gazetted to the provincial government by the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA), through a third-party reseller.

“By withholding the numbers and refusing to hand them over fully to ABT Telecoms, Kwa-Mahlaba Connect deprived over 15,000 civil servants in Mpumalanga access to telecommunications services. Their unfortunate actions had a spillover effect on millions of Mpumalanga residents who could not access critical public sector and emergency services. In a bid to speed up services delivery in the face of shameless and blatant sabotage by Kwa-Mahlaba Connect, ABT Telecoms purchased a tranche of 087 numbers to provide telecommunications services to civil servants while the porting of the numbers was still a subject of a court process,” Mr Nkumane said.

That decision was indicative of ABT Telecoms’s commitment to ensuring business continuity. The court rulings that followed the protracted legal battles in favour of ABT Telecoms have vindicated the company and cleared its name in the public domain following the false reporting that City Press undertook in its one-sided coverage of the matter.

It is worthwhile to realise what the court dealings have also uncovered. The company in question, which has served as a telecommunications service provider to the province for the last 18 years, cannot carry out the court order because it does not have the ICASA license required to port the numbers to ABT Telecoms.

Despite this revelation, the media, City Press, has never corrected its reportage and carried a story that the company that has been in business with the state has never had the capacity required to carry out its contract. Mr Nkumane added that it was disheartening and worrisome that such a reputable institution like the City Press would pick a side and not report fairly and in a balanced manner.

“ABT Telecoms has built telecoms infrastructure for Mpumalanga without a glitch. Over and above this contract, ABT has built telecommunications infrastructure in the Free State and KZN, thus rendering the argument around capacity moot.” said Mr Nkumane.

ABT Telecoms has also built a multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) network that connects government buildings in Mpumalanga. The MPLS network connects to the LAN that was re-engineered in less than three months and has enabled more than 7,000 civil servants to make voice calls through the 087 number.