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Earlier in the newscast, we told you about BTL's legal fight over who owns Channel 5. Well, there was another case from the Court which involves the other telecoms company, Speednet, better known as "Smart".

In 2011, Speednet sued the Public Utilities Commission claiming that the utilities regulator was overcharging them for licensing of 238 channels used to conduct their business such as phone calls, text messaging and data.

How much was Smart accusing the PUC of overcharging them? Almost 800,000 dollars, so the company asked the Supreme Court to rule on whether or not the PUC made errors in doing so, and the case was decided by Justice Legall. He dismissed the case, and so, they took it to the Court of Appeal for a second opinion, which was handed down today.

The attorney for PUC told us outside of court that they were somewhat more successful this time around:

Fred Lumor, SC – Attorney for PUC

"It's an appeal against the judgement of justice Legall which was lodged by speednet communications. The PUC had assess certain charges in the schedule to the telecommunications act for speednet to be paid. Speednet contention is that the fees are too large, onerous and too expensive and it was due to misinterpretation of the schedule of fees by PUC. So they asked the court to clarify the meaning of the schedule. The court rejected the appeal but partly accepted the argument of speednet. So the appeal was allowed to certain extent meaning that the fees are not to be paid in advance but should be paid in arrears since speednet has paid PUC the fees in advance. The court ordered that PUC should pay interest on over 700,000 dollars to each speednet paid to PUC as fees in advance - meaning that PUC would have to make payments of 6% interest on that money back to speednet. However, since speednet is to pay fees to PUC, they can set it off against future payments. So in a nutshell that was the decision this morning."

Daniel Ortiz

"Just for most of us, does it mean then that the public purse would have to pay telecommunications company anything any at all moving forward?"

Fred Lumor, SC

"No, no, no, no. There is no burden or loss to the public purse. Because what a happened is that fees were suppose to be paid at the end of the year but was paid at the beginning of the year. So what is just going to happen is that because PUC has been deemed to kept the money of speednet, so the court is allowing interest on that money. But PUC would not have to put their hands in their pocket to pay - it will be set off against future payments."

As noted in the interview, the $792,000 dollars plus 6% interest is being treated by the court as being collected in advance. PUC does not have to give it back to Smart because they have to pay regular fees. Instead, whatever fees are to be paid in the future, they will be deducted from that amount until a zero balance is arrived at.