{"id":18133,"date":"2011-01-31T14:08:00","date_gmt":"2011-01-31T12:08:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2011-01-31T14:08:00","modified_gmt":"2011-01-31T12:08:00","slug":"icasa-call-termination-rate-regulations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/technology\/18133-icasa-call-termination-rate-regulations.html","title":{"rendered":"ICASA Call Termination Rate Regulations"},"content":{"rendered":"

ICASA<\/a> on Friday published two practice notes in the Government Gazette seeking to clarify the interaction between the Interconnection Regulations and the Call Termination Rate Regulations.<\/p>\n

According to Kathleen Rice<\/a>, director in the TMT Practice at Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr<\/a> business law firm, “ICASA’s use of a practice note is novel and, whilst the intention is to give clarity on regulations, prevailing case law has it that practice notes are not considered binding and may not deviate from the enabling legislation.”<\/p>\n

Rice notes that the Interconnection Regulations require that all licensees party to interconnection agreements concluded prior to 1 January 2007 are to submit (or resubmit if they have previously been submitted) these interconnection agreements to ICASA for review.<\/p>\n

Licensees party to interconnection agreements concluded after 1 January 2007 have until 30 June 2011 to submit these agreements to ICASA.<\/p>\n

“The Termination Rate Regulations however require that the “big three”, MTN, Vodacom and MTN, all develop reference interconnect offers which must comply with the Interconnection Regulations and the Termination Rate Regulations.<\/p>\n

The RIOs are meant to contain the standard terms and conditions that will apply to all agreements concluded with the big three. The rationale is that the RIOs will streamline the interconnection agreement negotiation process making it easier and quicker for licensees who do not have countervailing bargaining power to conclude interconnection agreements with any one of the big three,” she says.<\/p>\n

Rice notes. “MTN, Vodacom and Telkom have not yet had their RIOs approved by ICASA. The RIOs ought to have been submitted to and approved by ICASA by no later than 13 January 2011 in terms of the Termination Rate Regulations. ICASA has now therefore, by way of its practice notes, condoned non-compliance with its own Termination Rate Regulations and waived compliance with its Interconnection Regulations.”<\/p>\n

Rice explains that the practice notes stipulate that once the RIOs have been finalised, ICASA will expect all interconnection agreements (which must conform with the RIOs) concluded with the big three to be submitted to it for review.<\/p>\n

“It is however important for all licensees with interconnection agreements with any one of the big three to note that ICASA has instructed all licensees to submit notification that they are adhering to the correct wholesale termination rates as stipulated in the Termination Rate Regulations. This notification must be submitted no later than 20 February 2011.<\/p>\n

“Licensees providing termination services at a fixed location are entitled to charge up to 20% more than Telkom (i.e. an asymmetrical wholesale fixed voice termination rate) and licensees providing termination services at a mobile location are entitled to charge up to 20% more than MTN and Vodacom (i.e an asymmetrical wholesale mobile voice termination rate). “<\/p>\n

Rice says that ICASA has not given any indication of whether all other licensees will be able to charge up until the full maximum asymmetrical rate and presumably this will be a matter for commercial negotiation.<\/p>\n

“If interconnecting parties are unable to agree on the exact percentage mark-up, ICASA can be formally called upon to resolve the dispute in terms of the Electronic Communications Act. The big three can be expected to resist the notion that all other licensees are automatically entitled to maximum asymmetrical rate so ICASA may have some tricky disputes referred to it.<\/p>\n

“That having been said, ICASA has stated that it has “no intention of determining wholesale call termination rates per licensee”. It seems therefore that ICASA will accept as being fair and reasonable any termination rate up to the maximum specified rate per market provided the interconnection provider concerned is not discriminating against interconnection seekers,” she says.<\/p>\n

Rice adds that what is made clear in ICASA’s practice note on the implementation of the asymmetry provisions of the termination rate regulations is that it will not be necessary for any non-big three licensees to apply to ICASA to charge an asymmetrical rate.<\/p>\n

“It seems that any licensee who had a share of less than 25% of total terminated minutes in the relevant fixed or mobile termination market as of June 2009 is automatically entitled to an asymmetrical rate.”<\/p>\n

Call Termination Rate regulations<\/strong><\/a> << Comments and views<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ICASA publishes practice notes to clarify interconnection and call termination rate regulations. Kaltheen Rice comments on this development.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18133"}],"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\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18133"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18133\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}