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.<\/p>\n
This comes after the regulator\u2019s previous regulations were struck down by the South Gauteng High Court as unlawful and invalid.<\/p>\n
However, the judge suspended the declaration of invalidity for six months, giving Icasa until the end of September to produce new regulations.<\/p>\n
Call termination rates are the fees telecommunications operators charge each other to connect calls to one another\u2019s networks.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
The same principle applies to fixed networks, with Telkom considered the large network.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
In the table below the new mobile call termination rates that Icasa announced are summarised.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
From March 2015, the termination rates for fixed and mobile calls will be the same.<\/p>\n