Creditors have agreed to the proposed 60-day adjournment--the longest period of time under the Corporations Act for which a creditors' meeting can be postponed--to allow the administrators -to pursue the sale of further parts of the business," a Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu spokesperson told ZDNet Australia.
However, the hold-off period is not set in stone and a creditors' meeting could be called before then--presumably if buyers are identified in the meantime.
There are now 45 parties interested in purchasing parts of the business, 50 percent of which have been through the data room set up to help them determine if they will acquire any of the troubled telco's assets. "This will continue now for another couple of weeks," the spokesperson said.
Open Telecommunications put itself into voluntary administration on July 19, following the collapse of the sale of its operational support systems (OSS) business.
In a statement to the Australian Stock Exchange, the company said it was insolvent or was likely to become insolvent in the foreseeable future. Deloitte partner Robert Whitton said at the time that there were 15 interested parties in purchasing the OSS business.
Over 200 staff were immediately stood down, with about 70 returned to work in Sydney on July 24, after Whitton drew commitment from key customers Comindico and LG to continue development of their SoftSwitch technology.
At the end of last week more staff were reinstated at Open Tel's Melbourne operations. -We have put back approximately 40 staff in Melbourne to continue serving existing contracts," the spokesperson said. -We don't know if there'll be any more [reinstated]." Whitton originally said he anticipated being able to reinstate 50-60 percent of staff.
The latest move to reinstate workers followed commitment from Optus to enable existing contracts to continue.
In an earlier statement, Whitton said he hoped to finalise the sale process by the end of August.
