{"id":47373,"date":"2013-10-09T10:31:55","date_gmt":"2013-10-09T08:31:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=47373"},"modified":"2013-10-09T10:55:24","modified_gmt":"2013-10-09T08:55:24","slug":"cell-c-takes-vodacom-mtn-to-the-competition-commission","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/mobile\/47373\/cell-c-takes-vodacom-mtn-to-the-competition-commission\/","title":{"rendered":"Cell C takes Vodacom, MTN to the Competition Commission"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cell C<\/a> has formally lodged a complaint with the Competition Commission<\/a> on Tuesday (8 October 2013), against the dominant incumbent mobile operators, MTN<\/a> and Vodacom<\/a>, for anti-competitive conduct.<\/p>\n

Speaking at the 2013 MyBroadband Conference, Cell C CEO Alan Knott-Craig<\/a> said that Vodacom and MTN are abusing their dominant market positions with far lower on-net calls.<\/p>\n

Knott-Craig vowed to fight against the unfair practices and poor policies in the country\u2019s telecoms space.<\/p>\n

According to Cell C, the crux of the complaint relates to the manner in which the dominant incumbents discriminate between their on-net and off-net effective prices, which has a dramatic and direct impact on smaller operators\u2019 ability to acquire new customers.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe two dominant incumbents discount their effective on-net prices substantially while charging a premium for their customers to call off-net. This amounts to discriminatory pricing and is without doubt anti-competitive when adopted by dominant operators,\u201d said Cell C CEO Alan Knott-Craig.<\/p>\n

\"Alan<\/a>

Cell C CEO, Alan Knott-Craig<\/p><\/div>\n

Cell C has been fiercely competing on all fronts with the ultimate aim of driving down prices for the consumer, which is also beneficial for Cell C.<\/p>\n

\u201cCustomers that call off-net are being penalised often without them realising it. With number portability, customers don\u2019t always know if they are calling on- or off-net anymore, so they don\u2019t actually know what rate they are paying,\u201d said Knott-Craig.<\/p>\n

According to a statement by Cell C, in many mobile markets around the world, regulators are opposed to differential on-net and off-net pricing, and in some instances, dominant mobile network operators are facing stiff fines for this kind of discriminatory pricing, which locks in customers and prevents switching.<\/p>\n

The operator highlighted instances in France, Papua New Guinea and Nigeria, where competition authorities took action against dominant telecoms players for similar behaviour.<\/p>\n

“All of these cases support Cell C\u2019s position in its Competition Commission complaint,” the mobile operator said.<\/p>\n

More news on South Africa\u2019s mobile landscape<\/h3>\n

We are winning: Cell C<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

No space for 4 mobile players in SA: Knott-Craig<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

MTN CEO warns \u201cdestructive\u201d rivals<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Cell C\u2019s Knott-Craig warns backers may stop investing<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0Half of SA mobile users would change their operator<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cell C has formally lodged a complaint with the Competition Commission against the dominant incumbent mobile operators, MTN and Vodacom.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":19113,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[42,1516,26,28,27],"class_list":["post-47373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mobile","tag-cell-c","tag-competition-commission","tag-headline","tag-mtn","tag-vodacom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47373"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47373\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47378,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47373\/revisions\/47378"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}