Is the Communications Minister too optimistic?

Do you think the Communications Minister is too optimistic about cellular price cuts?

  • Yes

    Votes: 24 82.8%

  • No

    Votes: 5 17.2%
  • Total voters
    29
When asked why the retail prices were so high, everyone pointed to the interconnect rates. Now that something is being done about it, he's labelled as being too optimistic. So what's the problem? Is there something else keeping prices high that he should have been notified about?
 
it was the same with the bandwidth prices. two years ago all the providers were saying that it was the high international prices that were keeping bandwidth prices up. When those came down, they changed their tune and said "there's more to it than that".
 
Bringing down the interconnect rate is a good start, but nothing forces the big operators to pass that saving on to the consumer.
 
“The independent regulator ICASA should monitor interconnect rates – if they fail to do their job, they should be removed from office,“ Kilian added. “His political intervention sets a dangerous precedent – it effectively means we have regulation by political intervention.”

What did you (Kilian) think, this is Africa:rolleyes:
 
Odracir said:
“The independent regulator ICASA should monitor interconnect rates – if they fail to do their job, they should be removed from office,“ Kilian added. “His political intervention sets a dangerous precedent – it effectively means we have regulation by political intervention.”

What did you (Kilian) think, this is Africa:rolleyes:
Click to expand...

There's political intervention one way or another - somebody is obviously keeping the ICASA staff on the payroll because they're clearly not doing their job. So I'd rather have them intervene in our favour.
 
More excuses by greedy Fat Cats refusing to provide fair pricing and opting rather for price fixing.Same old story, just different excuses.
The minister was not in the wrong,(this time) there should be savings passed on to the consumer(no matter how much these greedy telecoms tell you inter-connect rates don't affect retails pricing, which is just rubbish).

But hey, why settle for making 6 billion profit a year when you can get away with 8?
 
“The Minister should know that there is no correlation between interconnect rates and call rates.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately you are wrong Kilian, they are correlated, but they are not directly equivalent. If interconnect rates increase call rates will also increase, just not necessarily by the same margin.
 
The reduction in profits from lowered incoming interconnect revenues will be made up by increased profits from lowered outgoing interconnect costs while still keeping the retail price at the same level.

The result? Cellphone companies look like they're doing something while still ripping us off.
 
Vodacom and MTN obviously aren't going to lower their prices, they have far more inbound calls than outgoing. Lowering interconnect fees allows competitors to compete more fairly, that is all... It's now up to the smaller operators (yay for us, Virgin Mobile and Cell C :rolleyes:) to show us if they really have some balls. But lower prices means more calls, which means they have to upgrade their pathetic network capacity, which means... you know what it means, nothing as per usual.
 
These guys should just learn to appreciate good deeds. Killian should read mybroadband articles: This way he might learn something. The minister has applied unbearable pressure on these cell co's to lower their interconnection rates and succeeded. That is not all: He has also come hard on the inept ICASA, giving them until March, to give him the real inter-connection cost. Once he has the figure, he will give them a target date to give him an interconnect bill to be signed into law. The man hasn't been a year in office and there is tangible progress already.
 
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