{"id":10172,"date":"2009-10-23T12:44:00","date_gmt":"2009-10-23T10:44:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2009-10-23T12:44:00","modified_gmt":"2009-10-23T10:44:00","slug":"interconnect-talks-between-operators-terminated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/telecoms\/10172-interconnect-talks-between-operators-terminated.html","title":{"rendered":"Interconnect talks between operators terminated"},"content":{"rendered":"

In September this year<\/a> the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA) met with representatives of Vodacom, MTN, Cell C, Telkom, Neotel and the Internet Service Providers Association (ISPA) to discuss high mobile termination rates.<\/p>\n

At the time, an industry led process to reduce termination rates was agreed on where negotiations between the operators will be concluded by the end of December 2009 and with an implementation date of 1 February 2010.<\/p>\n

Since then the high mobile termination rates came under fire from various parties, including parliament, political parties and smaller operators, calling for rate cuts before the end of the year. <\/p>\n

The Portfolio Committee on Communications proposed that mobile and telecoms operators drop the interconnection rates<\/a> with effect from 1 November 2009 to 60 cents per minute during peak times. It further wants interconnection rates to be reduced by 15 cents annually on 1 November for each successive year until 2012.<\/p>\n

In mid-October the Minister of Communications Siphiwe Nyanda issued a policy direction on Mobile Termination Rates<\/a>, calling in ICASA to prescribe mobile termination rate regulations which will lower the interconnection rates, specifically the mobile termination rate, to a cost-based rate.<\/p>\n

The industry led negotiations on interconnect rates – which was strongly criticized by parliament and the Competition Commission – now seems to have been terminated by ICASA.  There are suggestions that the talks ‘were deadlocked,’ but no official statement to that effect has been released yet.<\/p>\n

Neotel today said that their understanding is that ICASA has chosen to terminate the process of seeking agreement with operators around the lowering of interconnection rates.  “The formal regulatory process that ICASA is following in terms of the EC Act is however continuing and Neotel continues to support this process, which is legally sound, provided that the consumer gets the benefit of these lower rates,” said Neotel.<\/p>\n

Vodacom, MTN, Telkom and Cell C could not immediately provide comment on the termination of talks, while ICASA promised an official statement on the issue today.<\/p>\n

Interconnect rate cut discussions terminated<\/strong><\/a> – comments and views<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ICASA is said to have terminated talks between operators to reduce interconnect rates<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10172","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-telecoms"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10172"}],"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=10172"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10172\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}