'Interconnect rates a case of classic collusion'
The Competition Commission today voiced agreement over the Department of Communications’ proposal to reduce the costs of mobile interconnection rates, proposing that ICASA regulates these prices directly to stimulate competition within the market and that barriers within the regulatory process be dropped.
A commission representative in turn said that the current fixed and mobile termination rates are an example of “classic collusion amongst mobile operators”.
The Competition Commission however supports an interim process to reduce termination rates, but pointed out that any figures “arrived at arbitrarily is subject to challenge”. It is important instead that these figures are defensible and are arrived at by some kind of objective and defensive process.
There was no indication given however at what these costs should be, but the Competition Commission suggested that peak interconnect costs of 60c per minute might indeed be too high. “We believe that ICASA should continue with the regulation process envisaged in the ECA” so that these rates can be reduced, over time, to a reasonable level, the CompCom said.
The commission added that multilateral discussions between private firms regarding acceptable interconnect rates simply pose an obstacle to progress within discussions. Instead the commission believes that ICASA should regulate these discussions to ensure that all unnecessarily confidential information becomes available to the relevant parties.
Interconnect rates & collusion – comments and views
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