Cell C competition complaint against Vodacom, MTN
Cell C on 8 October 2013 has filed a complaint with the Competition Commission against Vodacom and MTN, for price discrimination of on-net/off-net prices.
Speaking at the 2013 MyBroadband Conference, Cell C CEO Alan Knott-Craig said that Vodacom and MTN are abusing their dominant market positions with far lower on-net calls.
Knott-Craig vowed to fight against the unfair practices and poor policies in the country’s telecoms space.
“The crux of the complaint relates to the manner in which the dominant incumbents discriminate between their on-net and off-net effective prices, which has a dramatic and direct impact on smaller operators’ ability to acquire new customers,” the company said in a press statement.
“The two dominant incumbents discount their effective on-net prices substantially while charging a premium for their customers to call off-net. This amounts to discriminatory pricing and is without doubt anti-competitive when adopted by dominant operators”” said Alan Knott-Craig.
“Customers that call off-net are being penalised often without them realising it. With number portability, customers don’t always know if they are calling on- or off-net anymore, so they don’t actually know what rate they are paying,” said Knott-Craig.
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