Plaintiff: ANRT VoIP Ban Violates Article 33 of Constitution

Rabat – The National Telecommunications Regulatory Agency’s ban of VoIP services violates Article 33 of the Moroccan constitution, which guarantees governmental support for young people competing economically in a globalized world, according to Murad Ziboud, the lawyer of the plaintiff suing ANRT.

“It is incumbent on the public powers to take all the appropriate measures with a view…to facilitate the access of the young to culture, to science, to technology, to art, to sports and to leisure, all in creation of propitious conditions for the full deployment of their creative and innovative potential in all these domains,” Article 33 reads.

Ziboud made the constitutionality argument in the opening brief of the court case, which aims to repeal ANRT’s blockage of popular VoIP services, such as WhatsApp, Viber and Skype, in January of this year. The case had been scheduled for a preliminary hearing at a Rabat court on October 18^th.

This week, Medias24 sat down with ANRT’s lawyer Kamal Siadi, who argues that the agency has the authority to block the free calling services because the Internet is part of “the public domain of the state.”

For any operator to provide telecommunications services in Morocco, it must comply with provisions in place for national defense and public safety via domestic laws and international treaties, Siadi added.

“The free VoIP calling services do not fulfill these conditions,” according to a previous ANRT statement, which did identify the provisions that had not been satisfied. Siadi did not provide further clarification on the unfulfilled conditions either.

“If it turns out that the service does not meet the conditions, it is for operators to seek recourse for the situation,” Saidi said, doubling down on ANRT’s stance that customers do not have the right to sue over the VoIP ban because they have not signed a contract with the governmental agencies – telecom companies have.