With the cut in termination rates on Thursday, Neotel and MTN Business were first out of the blocks with retail tariff reductions.

Termination rates are the wholesale rates operators charge each other to field calls over their networks. As of Thursday, the rate for calls to and between mobile networks falls from 73c/minute to 56c/minute as part of a process managed by the Independent Communications Authority of SA.

Neotel has opted to reduce both its fixed and mobile rates for all of its customers, while MTN Business has opted for fixed-line reductions for its business customers.

In a statement accompanying the outline of its new rates, Neotel says it “is moving to a single standard rate for calls to all mobile operators”. This new rate is R1,05/minute during peak times and 94c/minute during off-peak periods. Neotel has also reduced the cost of calls to Telkom national numbers by 10%. It’s fixed-line reductions follow on the table below.

MTN Business, meanwhile, will reduce its fixed-line voice-over-Internet Protocol fees by almost 20% from Thursday. MTN has not made mention of reducing mobile costs, but says that the reduction in fixed-line costs is in keeping with the goal of creating “fixed-mobile convergence”, where users can seamlessly switch from a mobile to an Internet Protocol network. — Staff reporter, TechCentral