Two months and a half after the Puerto Rican Telecommunications Regulating Board (JRT) passed ClaroTV’s IPTV license, today the case will be taken up before the Federal Court of such country upon a interdiction request against the aforementioned agency submitted by Claro’s competitors the cable operators OneLink and Choice.
However, JRT President Sandra Torres pointed out that this does not mean that the procedure has been frozen, and Claro can move forward with the development of its service. Torres added that the board she presides asked the court to dismiss such interdiction request. Irmarie Cervera, Claro Sub-director of Corporate Relationships, highlighted that the company would make no comments in this regard.
In turn, OneLink has stated that it would turn to all necessary forums to inform that the decision taken by the agency leaves consumers unprotected and that it does not address illegal construction allegations, crossed subsidies and assumed bad faith of PRTC (name of the telephone operator acquired by América Móvil, currently Claro) since 2008.
“It was not our decision; some officers of the JRT itself have confirmed the existence of crossed subsidies, between telephone and Claro TV services. This is it and there is enough evidence of it”, stated Jorge Hernández, OneLink Communications VP and CFO. At the beginning, some officers of the regulating entity were reluctant to granting such license, and included fines over Claro on the grounds of an unauthorized infrastructure, but finally the regulating board declared that any previous procedures were void and passed the company’s IPTV service license in November 2, 2011.
