Hot Telecommunication Systems Ltd. (TASE: HOT.B1) is now using Bezeq Israeli Telecommunication Co. Ltd. (TASE: BEZQ) infrastructure to broadcast to hundreds of communities where it has not deployed its network.
Hot announced that it would launch three packages in communities to which it has hitherto not broadcast: a NIS 94 compact (basic) package, a NIS 194 classic package based on three of its cable packages, and a NIS 209 top package based on all of its cable packages except for premium sports and erotic channels. Users in these areas will be unable to obtain Hot's triple package, because as of now, telephony is not included in any of the packages.
Hot, which was supposed to have deployed its infrastructure in every community in Israel, will thereby benefit from Bezeq's already nationwide infrastructure. Hot will gain access to the hundreds of thousands of customers it ignored for years, with the blessing of Tzachi Hanegbi, the minister responsible for matters pertaining to Bezeq in the Minister of Communications, and Ministry of Communications director general Shlomo Filber.
Hot, purportedly an infrastructure company, has succeeded in making the Ministry of Communications treat it as a company that lacks infrastructure, like Partner Communications Ltd. (Nasdaq: PTNR; TASE: PTNR) and Cellcom Israel Ltd. (NYSE:CEL; TASE:CEL). As such, it is receiving a prize of hundreds of millions of shekels in the form of the right use Bezeq's infrastructure to reach all the places it refused to connect to its own infrastructure. In its announcement, Hot noted that Hanegbi and Filber are due to come to its offices this week in order to celebrate the event.
Hot has also failed to implement the Ministry of Communications wholesale market policy for its infrastructure, against which it is striving with all its might, so far successfully.
The public is now left with the question of how Hot received a gift from the Ministry of Communications with an estimated value in the hundreds of millions of shekels, despite not meeting the terms of its license, not completing the universal deployment of its infrastructure, and not allowing its competitors use of its infrastructure under the wholesale market reform.
As part of the approval for broadcasting on Bezeq's infrastructure, Hot is obligated to invest in deployment of fiber optics on its network. Such a plan has not yet been submitted, and may very well never be submitted.
Published by Globes [online], Israel Business News - www.globes-online.com - on January 2, 2017
© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2017