In July, JCV had applied to the Supreme Court for injunctions to restrain Cable & Wireless from discontinuing its services, which were being utilized in breach of JCV’s agreement with Cable & Wireless. At that time the Court granted an ex-parte interim injunction on the condition that JCV must abide by its contract with C&WJ, which contract prohibited JCV from using C&WJ’s facilities for the purpose of offering voice services to the public. JCV subsequently applied to the court to remove this restriction on the basis that the telecoms market was now liberalized and that there should no longer be any such restriction. The Court refused this application.

The matter of the injunctive relief sought by JCV was heard between August 12 and September 24. After hearing submissions from both parties in relation to whether JCV’s application for the injunction should be granted, the Supreme Court on September 24 discharged the interim injunction against C&WJ. The Court also refused JCV’s application for further injunctive relief thereby upholding the Cable & Wireless position that the complete liberalization of the telecommunications sector in March of this year, under the Telecommunications Act, did not mean that entities could begin providing services for which they were not licensed and for which there was no agreement.

The matter of the injunctions having been decided, the trial of the substantive issues was scheduled to commence on Thursday, October 9. However, JCV on Wednesday, October 7 through its attorneys, served a notice of discontinuance of the suit. On Friday, the court granted permission for the suit to be discontinued subject to C&WJ’s entitlement to recover its costs from JCV.

JCV is licensed as an Internet Service Provider and prior to March 1 of this year had an agreement with Cable & Wireless for dial-up lines, national leased circuits and access to Cable & Wireless’ Internet node. Subsequent to March 1, JCV began advertising an international prepaid calling card service using the Cable & Wireless facilities which it had agreed would have been used exclusively for the provision of Internet service and which explicitly excluded voice services.