Icasa announces new draft call regulations
The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) has given notice of the publication of its new draft call termination regulations, it said in a press statement issued on Friday, 4 October 2013.
According to the regulator, these outline a glide path for the next three years to reduce the cost to telecommunications operators of terminating a call on another network.
Icasa has proposed the following tariffs for calls that terminate on a mobile network:
- Current: R0.40
- 1 March 2014: R0.20
- 1 March 2015: R0.15
- 1 March 2016: R0.10
Fixed line termination over the whole period will be R0.19 between ON and R0.12 within ON, with no distinction between peak and off-peak times.
Icasa has also laid out a 6-year glide path for asymmetric termination rates for “qualifying licensees”.
“Licensees may qualify for this asymmetric rate if they have a market share of less than 20% of total minutes terminated to a mobile location,” Icasa said. “In effect, Cell C and Telkom Mobile qualify to charge these asymmetric rates.”
The proposed termination rates for these qualifying licensees are as follows:
- Current: R0.44
- 1 March 2014: R0.39
- 1 March 2015: R0.33
- 1 March 2016: R0.26
- 1 March 2017: R0.20
- 1 March 2018: R0.14
- 1 March 2019: R0.10
“The Authority finds no need to change the current asymmetric termination rates for fixed termination, meaning that asymmetric termination to a fixed location remains at 10%,” Icasa said.
Stakeholders will have 14 working days following the publication of the Government Gazette to submit written comments on the draft regulations, Icasa said.
This article first appeared on My Broadband
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