TORONTO – Iristel has taken its fight with Telus to the Ontario Superior Court of Justice claiming Telus has breached its wholesale contract and is seeking damages of $135 million.
In the statement of claim filed October 2nd, Iristel and ICE Wireless claim Telus has been not living up to its end of their contract by failing to connect calls to ICE Wireless customers or pay its bill to Iristel. In the filing Iristel says it is owed over $156,000 by Telus, but is claiming damages far higher to that because it is undermining Iristel’s standing in the telecom business in Canada, damaging its corporate reputation and harming ICE Wireless and its customers.
This is the second large lawsuit filed by Iristel against one of the incumbents as it filed a $147 million claim against Rogers back in June, alleging breach of contract.
Iristel, as it has also claimed in its Part 1 filing with the CRTC, says Telus is “deliberately failing to use available infrastructure to allow Telus customers to connect calls that would use lristel’s services, thus avoiding payment to lristel,” and “has deliberately failed to connect calls originating from and/or roaming (e.g., for carriers such as Verizon and T-Mobile) on Telus’ network for which lristel would provide termination services pursuant to the Agreement. Despite having available infrastructure capacity, Telus is deliberately manipulating its network to block calls to area code 867, including calls to ICE Wireless customers,” reads the statement of claim.
The dispute is over Telus’ claims that Iristel is wrongly boosting traffic to the area code 867, increasing the amount Telus then has to pay Iristel. Iristel has been vehement in disputing this.
Telus has not yet responded to the statement of claim, but has said recently Iristel is the author of its own misfortune, and the CRTC has not yet ruled on the companies’ competing Part 1 applications.
