The Independent Communications Authority of SA (Icasa) says its attempt to persuade mobile operators to reduce interconnection rates of their own volition — a process it dubs “moral suasion” — has failed.
This follows the break-up of talks on Friday aimed at finding a way of reducing high interconnection rates, the fees the mobile operators charge each other and other operators to carry calls on their networks. The meeting included representatives of Vodacom, MTN, Cell C, Telkom and the Internet Service Providers’ Association.
The mobile operators are under intense political pressure to reduce interconnection fees, which are also known as termination rates, and pass on those benefits to consumers in the form of lower retail tariffs.
“After deliberations, the authority noted that the mobile operators had nothing to put on the table as they could not come up with an agreed mobile termination rate among themselves,” Icasa says in a statement that will be released to the media later on Friday. “As a matter of fact, Vodacom and MTN refused to disclose their bilateral mobile termination rate agreement at the meeting.”
Icasa says that because the moral suasion process “did not yield positive results”, the authority will continue developing a framework for competition and cost-based pricing in the voice market as set out in chapter 10 of the Electronic Communications Act.
“The authority has already declared all mobile operators to have significant market power in terms of mobile termination rates. In terms of section 10 of the act, the authority has already identified and defined the call termination market as one of the priority markets to be subjected to competition regulation,” it says.
Icasa has promised to resolve the matter by end-March 2010. But this goes against a directive from communications minister Siphiwe Nyanda which instructs Icasa to bring down interconnection fees by no later than 30 November this year. — Duncan McLeod, TechCentral
Subscribe to our free daily newsletter or follow us on Twitter
