Excelcomindo ready to face class action

Tantri Yuliandini, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Cellular operator PT Excelcomindo Pratama is ready to face the possibility of a class action filed by more than 100 subscribers over its recently adjusted tariff structure, the company's lawyer said on Tuesday.

Todung Mulya Lubis of the Lubis, Santosa & Maulana law firm said that the allegations made by the subscribers' lawyers that the company had contravened prevailing regulations by imposing its charges were false, and that he was ready to prove so before the judges should the case go to court.

"The claims are without foundation and we can prove that Excel has not broken the law," he told a media conference here.

Law firm Dheanira Siregar, Anggraeni and Partners (DSAP), on behalf of more than 100 Excel subscribers, said on Tuesday that it would file a class action against Excel for allegedly rounding up the duration of calls to 30 seconds instead of the six seconds stipulated by a 1997 ministerial ruling.

This meant, for example, that a four-second call would be charged as a 30-second call instead of a six-second call. The mark-up had caused losses amounting to Rp 1 trillion if all 800,000 Excel subscribers were included, DSAP said earlier.

Excel had approximately 1 million subscribers as of September this year.

DSAP also alleged that Excel charged for calls to the operator, and had increased its charges without giving prior notice to the public.

DSAP said it had sent three formal warnings to the company over the possible class action.

Todung maintained that Excel had not broken the regulations on the rounding up of call times as the regulations differentiated between post-paid services and pre-paid services.

Excel's corporate secretary Susi A. Sulaiman said that the 1997 ministerial ruling cited by DSAP only regulated post-paid services, while pre-paid services were governed by ministerial decree No. 79/1998.

"For our post-paid subscribers, we have always complied with the six-second rule, but for pre-paid subscribers we go by the 1998 ministerial decree," she said.

The 1998 decree stipulated that charges for pre-paid calls could be charged at a rate amounting to a maximum of 140 percent of the peak-time rate for post-paid calls.