Thank you for supporting us: Icasa

The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) published an advertisement in the Sunday Times, thanking South Africans for their support in its recent legal battle with MTN and Vodacom regarding the call termination regulations, 2014.

On 31 March 2014, South Gauteng High Court judge Haseena Mayat declared the “Second Call Termination Amendment Regulations, 2014” invalid and unlawful.

This ruling basically confirmed Vodacom and MTN’s view that Icasa messed up and had not followed proper processes to determine the call termination rates.

Judge Mayat suspended the declaration for six months to give the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) time to review its call termination regulations.

Icasa has now come out and published an advertisement, thanking South Africans for their support during the legal battle.

In February 2014, ICASA published regulations that reduced the wholesale termination rate. These are the rates that operators pay each other to call subscribers across networks. These regulations had two objectives, to:

1) reduce the cost of communications in the public interest;
2) improve competition in the mobile and fixed line markets

The regulations set a call termination rate of 20c [per minute] for calls to larger operators and a rate of 44c [per minute] for calls to smaller operators.

MTN and Vodacom challenged the regulations in court, because they considered them unlawful and ICASA opposed this application.

Judge Mayat who heard the application held that the regulations, including the 20c rate set in the regulations, are unlawful. However, she exercised her discretion and held that the regulations should come into effect for 6 months to allow Icasa, during this period, to promulgate new regulations and set new call termination rates.

The result for consumers

1) Call charges for consumers will not necessarily come down. Icasa hopes that the operators will set lower call charges because the interconnection rates that they pay each other have in some cases been reduced.

2) If call charges are reduced by the operators, the operators are not required to reduce call rates by the full amount of the reduced interconnection rate. Icasa hopes, however, that the operators pass on the benefit of the new call termination rates to consumers to the greatest extent possible.

Icasa advertisement

More on Icasa and termination rates

Hollow victory for MTN, Vodacom in termination battle

The simple truth: Icasa messed up