{"id":10084,"date":"2009-10-19T16:33:00","date_gmt":"2009-10-19T14:33:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2009-10-19T16:33:00","modified_gmt":"2009-10-19T14:33:00","slug":"interconnect-rates-affect-neotel-voice-pricing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/telecoms\/10084-interconnect-rates-affect-neotel-voice-pricing.html","title":{"rendered":"Interconnect rates affect Neotel voice pricing"},"content":{"rendered":"

High mobile termination rates have come under fire for keeping local telecoms rates artificially high.  Neotel is one of the companies which are asking for interconnect rate cuts, and we caught up with Dr. Angus Hay, Chief Technology Officer at Neotel, to speak about pricing, interconnect rates, and infrastructure.<\/p>\n

When asked about any future price reduction plans, Hay said that “Our business philosophy is based on driving value in terms of pricing. We have the intention to improve pricing over time. There are a number of initiatives that could contribute to improving that, one of which is the availability of cost effective bandwidth, from SEACOM for example.”<\/p>\n

“Other factors such as the impact of voice termination will affect our ability to better price voice. At an on-net level we are already the best voice pricing in the market. The only area where we can improve our voice pricing easily is interconnect.”<\/p>\n

Interconnect rates<\/strong><\/p>\n

Hay discussed Neotel’s position<\/a> on the recent parliamentary hearings on the subject. “We have made a submission to parliament – our position is very clear. We believe very strongly that a proper process must be followed, and are supportive of the regulatory process undertaken by ICASA.”<\/p>\n

“We are very keen to ensure that the effect of any reduction actually filters through to the consumer as well – not just for our network, but for everyone’s network,” said Hay.<\/p>\n

Local Loop Unbundling<\/strong><\/p>\n

On the issue of LLU, Hay said “We don’t expect anything to happen quickly. The regulator has indicated a timeline of 2011, but we haven’t made any bets on LLU. We would almost certainly make use of LLU if it were available.”<\/p>\n

Due to the cost of operating on the existing copper infrastructure, Neotel has been rolling out its own fibre optic national backhaul networks. Hay said that in some ways, this puts South Africa at an advantage.<\/p>\n

“Many countries in the world rely heavily on their copper [infrastructure], but some have seen significant fibre rollout, and they are starting to set the benchmark in broadband. We are tracking countries such as Sweden and Korea, and are basing a lot of our thinking [on their models],” Hay explained.<\/p>\n

Neotel Infrastructure<\/strong><\/p>\n

Giving an update on the Neotel network, Hay said, “We have a national backbone of about 8000 kilometres of fibre. We are busy with a co-build model with other operators, building out national fibre of about 5000 kilometres.”<\/p>\n

“We have commenced that network rollout, and we are a few hundred kilometres into that, but the significant rollout has been in the metros. At last count we were at 3800 kilometres of fibre trenches,” Hay continued.<\/p>\n

“We have switched on SEACOM bandwidth, taking bandwidth directly off the SEACOM cable, using it for our own internet, and for our customers. There are a number of SEACOM customers using our national backhaul to move SEACOM bandwidth out of the data  centre in Midrand,” Hay concluded.<\/p>\n

Neotel & interconnect rates<\/strong><\/a> – discussion<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Voice pricing would benefit from interconnect rate cuts says Neotel<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10084","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-telecoms"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10084"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10084"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10084\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}