WirelessG CEO Carel van der Merwe says the Wi-Fi communications specialist has agreed to enter into talks with Vodacom after the mobile operator’s CEO, Shameel Joosub, sent him an invitation to enter into negotiations.

This is according to Van der Merwe, who tells TechCentral that the talks will take place on 20 February. This is nine days after Vodacom is expected to submit an answering affidavit to the high court in a case brought by WirelessG against the mobile operator.

WirelessG has taken Vodacom, which holds 26% of the company’s equity, to court, accusing the mobile operator of reneging on a shareholders’ agreement that grants its partner exclusivity over any Wi-Fi infrastructure Vodacom wants to build.

“It’s always best to find a negotiated resolution,” Van der Merwe says of the planned talks with Vodacom. “We want to go on with the relationship. But the starting point of negotiations is the terms of the original agreement with Vodacom, of course taking into account that the market has evolved and there may need to be new inputs from both parties.”

Van der Merwe told TechCentral earlier in January that Vodacom had begun to backtrack on the agreements between the parties after it realised that “data offloading” onto Wi-Fi from its mobile broadband network was becoming a significant strategic opportunity. He claims Vodacom had held discussions with a number of WirelessG’s rivals in the past nine months and also ran pilot Wi-Fi projects late last year without involving the company in contravention of the shareholders’ agreement.

He told TechCentral at the time that WirelessG originally sold the 26% stake to Vodacom at a 49% discount in exchange for various commercial rights, including exclusivity rights for providing Wi-Fi services and infrastructure.

Vodacom won’t comment in detail on the talks, saying only that although it believes it has a “strong defence to the allegations made by WirelessG”, it would nevertheless “prefer to sit down” with the company to resolve the matter amicably.