ICASA mum on interconnect regulations
Mobile Termination Rates (MTRs), aka interconnect rates, have come under severe fire from industry players, parliament, consumers and the media in 2009.
This backlash against the mobile operators resulted in Peak Mobile Termination Rates falling from the previous R1.25 per minute to 89c per minute in March after an agreement was reached between the cellular operators and ICASA.
This was however only seen as a first step in reducing MTRs to a cost based price.
According to Alison Gillwald, Director of Research ICT Africa, evidence from a benchmarking study conducted last year for the Namibian regulator to determine their cellular interconnection rates shows that the cost-based interconnect costs of efficient operators are probably lower than 25 cents per minute.
ICASA Chairman Paris Mashile said in February that the Regulator will come up with its own pricing which is cost based. According to Mashile ICASA has already determined that the cellular environment is not fully competitive, and that there are significant market players.
Mashile promised draft regulations ‘to ensure a more competitive market and better pricing’ in March, which will be followed by a public consultation process after which final regulations will be gazetted.
ICASA further promised that the final wholesale termination rate regulations will be completed by June 2010.
Since then not much was heard about this issue from ICASA, and when the regulator was asked yesterday whether the draft MTR regulations have indeed been published they did not respond.
ICASA also did not provide any feedback when asked if anything was causing a delay in the publishing of the regulations, or whether a new due date has been set.
ICASA interconnect regulations << discussion
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