Holjevac: Cancel T-HT Land Lines

SNL president Tatjana Holjevac asked the citizens to cancel the T-HT telephone at a special press conference.

- My next step is to alert the citizens to cancel the T-HT land lines and I am going to do the same with my telephone and cellphones – said Tatjana Holjevac, the president of the United Independent Lists (SNL) after she had managed to get the secret concession agreement between the Government and Croatian telecommunications company HT. Our portal has already reported on this.

What is disputable is whether the state also sold the lines, i.e. infrastructure, with the agreement. The disputed secret agreement was suspected to be the direct proof of the complete privatization of distribution-telecommunications network DTK by HT. For this reason, Holjevac has been asking for the agreement to be released for a long time.

- We managed to get the secret deal by citing the law on the right of public access to information, said Holjevac. After her relentless requests, the secret concession deal between the Ministry of the Sea, Tourism, Transport and Development and Croatian telecommunications company HT was published on the Ministry's website. 

Even though the introductory part of the agreement, which is not part of the agreement, states that DTK did not go to T-HT, article 7 is disputable because the second paragraph states that "with this Agreement, no rights are granted to HT related to the ownership of the distribution-telecommunications channels (DTK)." 

Holjevac also finds article 7, item 3 to be disputable, which states that "Forming this agreement has no impact on property rights of the concession holder over the concession holder's telecommunications network and telecommunications infrastructure." 

- Article 7, item 3 directly contradicts the second paragraph of the introductory part of the document. According to this, the DTK infrastructure does belong to HT after all, said Holjevac.  

She explains that, with the concession right over DTK, HT acquires the right to charge all the operators that do not have networks of their own leading to users a 60 kunas' fee plus VAT. According to this deal, Croatian citizens should pay the 60 kunas' land line fee for the next 22 years, since concession was given for 30 years.

- While other operators' fees were lowered by up to 100 percent, T-HT has no plans to lower the high prices for their 1.5 million users. Apart from this, T-HT does not even invest in the modernization of technology and blocks new operators – Holjevac concluded before calling for civil disobedience.