{"id":11449,"date":"2010-02-10T20:27:00","date_gmt":"2010-02-10T18:27:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2010-02-10T20:27:00","modified_gmt":"2010-02-10T18:27:00","slug":"interconnect-rate-cut-approved","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/cellular\/11449-interconnect-rate-cut-approved.html","title":{"rendered":"Interconnect rate cut approved"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA) has approved the newly filed mobile terminate rate agreements between Vodacom, MTN and Cell C – something which should pave the way to a peak mobile interconnect rate cut from R1.25 to 89c per minute<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“ICASA has approved the revised interconnection agreements that were filed by Vodacom, MTN and Cell C. The revised agreements were filed with the Authority on the 9th February 2010,” ICASA said in a press statement.  “The agreements provide for interconnection rates to drop from R1.25 to 89 cents, during peak period, as from 1st March 2010. The rate for off-peak period remains unchanged at 77 cents.”<\/p>\n

“The agreements have no suspensive resolutive conditions that bind the Authority or its processes. The Authority holds that this reduction in interconnection rates will be passed through to the consumers,” said ICASA.<\/p>\n

ICASA added that it has informed the three mobile operators that they are obliged to re-negotiate all interconnection agreements they have with other licensees based on the non-discrimination principle in clause 8 of the Interconnection Guidelines of 2000.  “Once these had been re-negotiated, such interconnection agreements must still be filed with the Authority for approval,” said ICASA.<\/p>\n

“Whilst these measures are being implemented, the Authority will continue with its processes of introducing competition in the wholesale call termination market with the intent of lowering the costs of communications in South Africa.”<\/p>\n

To this end, ICASA said it will release draft Wholesale Call Termination Regulations in March 2010, and subject these to public and stakeholder input before it publishes the Final Regulations by the end of June 2010.<\/p>\n

While it is not certain that the lower peak interconnect rates will have an immediate effect on cellular call rates, Telkom has already indicated that it plans to pass the full interconnect savings on to consumers.  Neotel did not want to comment on the issue when it was asked whether its subscribers will also see an immediate reduction in prices.<\/p>\n

Interconnect rate cuts<\/strong><\/a> << will it mean lower mobile prices?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ICASA approves interconnect rate agreements from Vodacom, MTN and Cell C<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cellular"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11449"}],"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=11449"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11449\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}