PTI eyes resumption of talks with MPLA

Pacific Telecom Inc. said yesterday that it would ask the Marianas Public Lands Authority to resume negotiations with the company for a settlement that will end the lawsuit filed by the government agency against the telecom firm.

PTI general manager Tony Mosley said he would contact MPLA commissioner Edward DeLeon Guerrero this week to ask for the resumption of talks, which bogged down for the second time exactly two months ago. “This week, we’ll make some progress,” Mosley said.

Talks between the two bogged down following MPLA’s filing of a civil lawsuit against PTI and Micronesian Telecommunication Corp. It only resumed after Gov. Juan N. Babauta announced on Oct. 20 that he had urged MPLA to go back to the negotiating table. The renewed talks got bogged down again last Oct. 27.

The MPLA and its board sued PTI and Verizon’s owner, Micronesian Telecommunications Corp., at the Superior Court for alleged breach of public land leases and for alleged improper use of public lands easement in burying their cables without paying the agency easement fees. The MPLA filed the suit in early October after the companies disputed its demand for payment of some $2.1 million related to the easement fees—less than a month after PTI purchased all of MTC’s common stocks for approximately $60 million.

The governor intervened upon the request of PTI employees, who trooped to his office and asked that political “vendetta” be stopped against their employer, fearing for the loss of their jobs. The workers also urged the governor to intervene in the MPLA-PTI dispute.

Renewed talks had just begun when they were stalled again last Oct. 27, when MPLA legal counsel Ramon Quichocho allegedly raised his voice at former CNMI Chief Justice Jose Dela Cruz, a PTI board member. In turn, Quichocho alleged that he and Dela Cruz raised their voices against each other after the former chief justice yelled at him, accusing the latter of intimidation.

On Nov. 2, PTI and MTC sought the transfer of MPLA’s lawsuit against them from the CNMI court to Saipan’s federal court, alleging that the agency’s causes of action were based on claims that infringe upon the U.S. Constitution and federal law.

MTC and PTI filed with the federal court a notice of removal, saying that MTC is a duly franchised CNMI telecommunications local exchange carrier subject to the provisions of the Federal Telecommunications Act of 1996. The companies also accused MPLA of engaging in discriminatory practices, particularly in the agency’s bid to impose certain public land lease and easement requirements.

PTI and MTC want MPLA to withdraw its lawsuit and go back to the negotiating table, even though they maintain that retroactively imposing easement fees on the telecom firm for use of right-of-way on public lands to bury telecom cables underground was improper.

The MPLA has expressed its willingness to resume negotiations with the telecom firm.