CAPE TOWN - Telkom has become embroiled in a multibillion-rand row with a US information technology (IT) group after the local telecommunications parastatal axed a lucrative software supply deal.

Now the US telecommunications software group Telcordia, which was awarded the supply tender two years ago, has taken the dispute with Telkom to the International Chamber of Commerce in France.

A source close to the tender estimated last week that the project, punted as the one that would give Telkom a "world-class solution", was worth R2,5 billion in terms of the software and development costs, installation and the integration of the new software into Telkom's existing operations.

Sizwe Matshikiza, a spokesman for the Communication Workers' Union, estimated that the failure of the Telcordia tender and the so-called "I-Care Flow Through" project anticipated to have arisen out of the tender, had "bled the company (Telkom) to the tune of R4 billion". The deal was sealed in mid-1999.

. . .

The source said the software that arrived from Telcordia in the US had "hundreds of bugs in them" and was incapable of being loaded into Telkom's systems.

The Namibian

-- spider (spider0@usa.net), June 20, 2001