New call termination rates published

The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) revealed its new draft call termination regulations at a press conference called at the last-minute on Thursday, 4 September 2014.

This comes after the regulator’s previous regulations were struck down by the South Gauteng High Court as unlawful and invalid.

However, the judge suspended the declaration of invalidity for six months, giving Icasa until the end of September to produce new regulations.

Call termination rates are the fees telecommunications operators charge each other to connect calls to one another’s networks.

These new proposed regulations offer significantly lower asymmetry to smaller players such as Cell C and Telkom Mobile, which is partly what MTN and Vodacom fought for.

Asymmetry in the rates means that the regulations allow Cell C and Telkom Mobile to charge more for Vodacom and MTN to connect calls to their networks than the larger operators are allowed to charge them.

The same principle applies to fixed networks, with Telkom considered the large network.

Icasa has also changed the way it determines whether an operator may qualify for asymmetry. Instead of using market share (which had to be under 25% to qualify previously), the new regulations looks at total terminated minutes.

For an operator to qualify for asymmetry it must have less than 20% of the share of total terminated minutes in either the fixed or mobile market.

In the table below the new mobile call termination rates that Icasa announced are summarised.

The fixed call rates from 1 October 2014 to 28 February 2015 will be 12c within the same area code, and 19c between different area codes.

From March 2015, the termination rates for fixed and mobile calls will be the same.

More cellular and mobile termination rates articles

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