Icasa caves to Vodacom, MTN pressure: report

·20 Mar 2014

The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) will review its original decision to cut mobile termination rates following legal pressure from Vodacom and MTN Group, according to a Bloomberg report.

Termination rates are the fees that telecommunications operators pay one another to connect calls to each other’s networks.

Icasa released its “Call Termination Regulations, 2014” on 29 January 2014, which would see mobile termination rates (MTR) reduced from the current 40 cents per minute to 10 cents per minute over the next three years.

The regulations further call for significant asymmetry, up from the current 10% to 120% from March 2014, 180% from March 2015, and 300% from March 2016.

The new call termination rates were set to kick in on 1 March 2014, but after both Vodacom and MTN initiated court proceedings against Icasa in February, the regulator postponed the implementation date to 1 April 2014.

Vodacom and MTN believes that Icasa has not followed a fair and objective process to determine the final termination rates in its call termination regulations 2014.

According to a document seen by Bloomberg, Icasa “has decided to engage in a reconsideration of the termination rates applicable for the years beginning 1 April 2015 and 1 April 2016″.

The media company said that the watchdog confirmed the affidavit and its content, and said that the review is being conducted with the aid of an external economist.

“The matter is going to court next week and all clarification will be made then,” Icasa said.