Leave interconnect alone, ICASA told CAP in 2008
Over the last few months high mobile interconnect rates (MTRs) in South Africa made headlines, with parliament, consumers and industry players asking for urgent mobile termination rate reductions.
Mounting pressure from the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Communications, the media, consumers and industry players resulted in the three mobile providers reaching an agreement to cut the peak MTR from R1.25 per minute to 89c per minute.
In the extensive interconnect debate the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA) was often lambasted for not doing enough to tackle the issue of high interconnect fees from mobile providers, something which has elevated MTR regulations to the top of the Regulator’s agenda.
But this was not always the case. According to a recent damning report by the ICASA Consumer Advisory Panel (CAP) – who is mandated to give consumers a voice within the Regulator – they were told to not comment on the high mobile interconnect rates.
According to the report compiled in September 2009, the Consumer Advisory Panel “immediately identified interconnection as an urgent consumer issue on which the Panel wanted to focus and provide advice to the Authority.”
According to the report CAP researched, drafted and made written submissions to ICASA on the then draft Interconnection regulations in February 2008. In addition CAP made a formal written submission on the draft Essential Facilities regulations as well as the draft Facilities Leasing regulations.
One would have thought that CAP would be commended for their proactive approach to addressing this pressing issue which can significantly improve the telecoms landscape and reduce telecoms pricing in South Africa, but quite the opposite seemed to have happened.
According to the report ICASA Consumer Affairs Division (CAD) portfolio councilor Brenda Ntombela informed CAP at the time that interconnection was not an issue on which CAP should provide advice. Considering the importance of lower mobile termination rates in reducing telephony prices in SA to benefit consumers, it is perplexing why ICASA would advise a consumer panel to leave interconnect rates alone.
ICASA was contacted to find out why they advised CAP to not give their advice on interconnect rates, but the Regulator did not provide any feedback by the time of publication.
Leave interconnect alone said ICASA << Discussion
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