Vodacom is being investigated by the competition commission for a tender it won with the National Treasury to provide cellphone contracts to 20 government departments.

The telecommunication company was to be the exclusive provider of contracts to staff of at least 20 departments from September last year until 2020.

The competition commission has said this exclusive contract may contravene the Competition Act and was the possible abuse of a dominant position. The commission had said it could result in a loss of money for other mobile providers and entrench Vodacom’s dominant position in the market.

The commission said: “The Competition Act prohibits a dominant firm from abusing its dominance by requiring or inducing a supplier or customer to not deal with a competitor and engaging in an exclusionary act that impedes or prevents a firm’s entry or expansion within a market‚ unless the firm concerned can show technological or other pro-competitive gains which outweigh the anti-competitive effect of its act.”

It said it was “of the view that the contract will further entrench Vodacom’s dominant position in the relevant market‚ raise barriers to entry and expansion [for others] in the relevant market‚ distort competition in the market and result in a loss of market share for other network operators.”

 The competition commission is also investigating many banks after foreign traders allegedly fixed the spot price of the rand by refraining from trading for a period or deciding when to trade. This was unlikely to change the rand value as trading is done to four decimal points.

 The commission is further investigating drug company Roche for high prices of a cancer drug‚ and it referred Computicket to the competition tribunal for its arrangement where it is the sole provider of tickets for music concerts.