RIYADH: A spokesman for Saudi Oger, the construction company that has been accused by Mobily of negligently cutting its two fiber optic lines, said yesterday that his company would file a countersuit against the telecommunications company for what it claims are false allegations leaked to the press.
The counter lawsuit would be filed if Mobily moved ahead on its legal threats.
“Mobily is making false claims to mislead the public,” said Samir Khairallah, a project manager at Saudi Oger. “We will sue Mobily for accusing us of what we have not done.”
On Thursday, Mobily accused Saudi Oger of cutting two vital lines in Khurais, 200 km east of Riyadh. Mobily spokesperson Humoud Al-Ghobaini issued a statement saying the lines were cut despite Mobily providing detailed maps of their underground network and the cables being buried under several feet of concrete.
“We have no projects in Khurais, 200 km east of Riyadh, so how could we have cut their fiber optic cables there?” said Khairallah.
He did concede that “a very small cable” had been cut at another site in Riyadh, but questions how such a cut could have resulted in service disruption for 11 million customers.
Al-Ghobaini claimed that many customers saw their service disrupted “across the Kingdom” due to the cable-cutting incident. Mobily’s service was out for several hours on Wednesday. Workers managd to fix the line breaks by 9:30 p.m. after hundreds of thousands of mobile phone and corporate telecommunications customers were without service.
“It is natural for Oger to deny the charge, because if they accept they would be required to pay millions of riyals in compensation,” said Al-Ghobaini.
He said Mobily was considering a compensation formula for subscribers under which customers would probably be given a three-minute credit facility. “This will cumulatively cost us at least SR200 million,” said Al-Ghobaini.
For his part, Kairallah said Mobily might have been blaming Saudi Oger for “problems somewhere else in their network and they used this cable-cutting episode in Riyadh as a pretext to tell customers that such a major disruption of services was caused by Oger.”
The spokesman also said Mobily never showed Saudi Oger maps of its underground fiber optic network as it claimed. “Hence, we are also going to sue them for misleading the public, if they sue us,” he added.
Saudi Oger is a major construction company with diverse business interests, owned mainly by the family of the late Lebanese leader Rafik Hariri. Mobily is the official brand name of Etihad Etisalat, the second telecommunications company operating in the Kingdom.
