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Icasa proposes sharp cuts in termination rates
2013-10-07 14:45:00| Telecompaper Headlines
(Telecompaper) South Africa's Independent Communications Authority of South Africa has proposed a sharp reduction in termination rates. Following a review of the effectiveness of competition in the market for call termination, the regulator imposed cost-oriented pricing on Vodacom and MTN for mobile termination and Telkom for fixed termination. Icasa said the market remains ineffective with extremely high levels of concentration. As a result, it proposed cutting the current mobile termination rate of ZAR 0.40 per minute to ZAR 0.20 from March 2014, ZAR 0.15 from March 2015 and ZAR 0.10 from March 2016. Licensees may qualify for an asymmetric rate if they have a market share of less than 20 percent of total minutes terminated to a mobile location. In effect this means Cell C and Telkom Mobile qualify to charge asymmetric rates, and Icasa proposed maximum fees of ZAR 0.39 from March 2014, ZAR 0.33 from March 2015 and ZAR 0.26 from March 2016, compared to the current rate of ZAR 0.44. For the fixed market, the regulator left the current asymmetric rates unchanged and proposed a rate of ZAR 0.19 for cross-net calls and ZAR 0.12 for on-net calls for the period 2014-16. Stakeholders will have 14 working days following the publication of the decision in the Government Gazette to submit written comments on the draft regulations.
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Category:Telecommunications