Aug. 26--If the dispute between Americatel and El Salvador's dominant telecommunications company were a boxing match, Americatel should have won a knockout.

Americatel El Salvador won an arbitration against Compania de Telecommunicaciones de El Salvador -- or CTE -- to allow greater access to the Salvadoran market. It also got the green light from a federal judge in Miami to collect some $12 million in compensation.

But CTE didn't stop fighting. The company has appealed the arbitration decision all the way to the Supreme Court in El Salvador and is taking the U.S. bout to the federal appeals court in Atlanta.

Riding on the outcome is more than just prying open lucrative Central American telecommunications markets.

The CTE-Americatel matchup is a test of the growing practice of binding arbitration, the very purpose of which is avoiding lengthy and costly litigation. Contracts increasingly contain clauses pledging parties to submit to binding arbitration. Americatel versus CTE is not the first arbitration case to drag on in regular courts, but it has gained widespread attention and could set a precedent for many more pending cases.

Even the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative has raised the Americatel-CTE disagreement in a review of barriers to telecommunications access. Liberalizing the Central American telecommunications markets was one of the linchpins of the Central American Free Trade Agreement, which also includes the Dominican Republic.

FORMERLY IN DORAL

Americatel -- once based in Doral and now owned by Denver-based business executive Thomas A. Gordon through Iselo Holdings -- was awarded $9.4 million and additional long-distance access circuits in El Salvador when it won its arbitration with CTE in May 2007.

The gist of Americatel's complaint was that CTE had cut off its access to these circuits, driving down its business and violating the contract.

CTE, part of the America Movil telecommunications empire of Mexican telecom mogul Carlos Slim, demanded and lost a clarification from the arbitration panel and an appeal to a Salvadoran civil court before appealing to the Supreme Court. That appeal is pending.

Americatel filed a petition in U.S. District Court in Miami for authorization to collect the award in the United States. (Arbitration awards can be collected anywhere the losing party has assets.)

U.S. District Judge Federico A. Moreno first confirmed the award, then rescinded it to wait for the civil court outcome in El Salvador.

When the civil court ruled for Americatel, Moreno allowed the company to collect $12.6 million in awards and interest by tapping into America Movil's U.S.