The Ministry of Communications is threatening financial sanctions against Bezeq, because the company is not meeting its commitments on ADSL high-speed Internet.
In a letter sent to Bezeq last week, the Ministry of Communications claims that the company is not providing all the serviced it has undertaken to provide. The Ministry also says that Bezeq fails to meet the Ministry’s requirements concerning contract format, and that consequently no contracts have been signed with Internet providers. Nor did Bezeq removed the link to Infogate on its ADSL portal Wow, despite the Ministry’s demand that all links to content providers be removed from the site.
Bezeq’s spokeswoman said in response: “Bezeq protests the Ministry of Communication’s intervention in the minute details of all of its commercial agreements with various Internet providers. At the same time, Bezeq has suggested a meeting with Ministry representatives to iron things out.”
Bezeq’s legal advisor sent a letter to Ministry of Communications legal advisor Yizhar Tal, denying that Bezeq failed to meet the obligations placed on it.
By failure to provide all services, the Ministry apparently refers to non-provision of high-speed Internet in the Bit Stream Access method, in which the Internet provider leases equipment from Bezeq and sells the entire service to the customer. Bezeq’s legal advisor claims that Internet companies are not interested in providing this service, and only NetVision expressed an interest in studying the issue. Last week, however, NetVision asked to postpone the process.
Referring to content links, Bezeq’s legal advisor said that Bezeq asked Infogate to remove its link from the Wow site. Moreover, Infogate reportedly approached the Ministry of Communications, and claimed it had received approval for postponing the removal of the link until Tuesday. Bezeq said that the company asked the Ministry of Communications to confirm this.
Ministry of Communications director general Daniel Rosenne would not comment on the report.
Published by Israel's Business Arena on 18 February, 2001