{"id":52418,"date":"2014-01-29T16:34:29","date_gmt":"2014-01-29T14:34:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=52418"},"modified":"2014-01-30T09:53:58","modified_gmt":"2014-01-30T07:53:58","slug":"mtn-vodacom-sink-on-rate-cuts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/mobile\/52418\/mtn-vodacom-sink-on-rate-cuts\/","title":{"rendered":"MTN, Vodacom sink on rate cuts"},"content":{"rendered":"

Shares in mobile operators, MTN<\/a> and Vodacom<\/a> fell sharply in trade on the JSE on Wednesday (29\u00a0January), after the\u00a0Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa<\/a>) announced new call termination rates (CTRs).<\/p>\n

Unsurprisingly, Telkom<\/a> moved the other direction as the announcement would benefit the firm.<\/p>\n

CTRs refer to the fee that one network charges another for receiving and terminating calls on its network. These rates have\u00a0declined from R1.25, in 2009, to a current price of 40 cents.<\/p>\n

According to the new regulations, the rate will drop to R0.20 from 1 March 2014, with a further drop to\u00a0R0.15 in 2015, and R0.10 the following year.\u00a0This is the rate, per minute, the\u00a0smaller\u00a0operators will pay MTN and Vodacom to carry calls.<\/p>\n

The cuts for smaller operators like Cell C and Telkom Mobile<\/a> will remain at R.044, which is the rate both\u00a0Vodacom and MTN will pay\u00a0to carry calls from those smaller operators.<\/p>\n

At 16:25pm, shares in MTN declined 2.69% or R5.52 to R199.60, while Vodacom\u00a0was off 3.25% or R3.97 to R118.36. Telkom, meanwhile, added half a percent to R31.63.<\/p>\n

Vodacom CEO Shameel Joosub<\/a> said of Icasa’s decision:\u00a0\u201cI wish I could say this is a victory for the consumer, but it is far from it. This is a subsidy which, in effect, means that Vodacom will be charged more to call Cell C and Telkom Mobile than the latter will be charged to call Vodacom.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis prejudices Vodacom\u2019s customers, and rewards those who have not invested in their networks at the expense of those who have.\u201d<\/p>\n

Zunaid Bulbulia<\/a>, MTN SA CEO said that the group is considering its options following the announcement.<\/p>\n

More on CTRs<\/h3>\n

Telkom to pass on CTR cuts to consumers<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Vodacom: Consumers won\u2019t benefit from MTR cuts<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Drastic call termination cuts announced<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

New call termination rates coming<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

MTR cuts would cost us R1 billion: MTN<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Shares in mobile oeprators, MTN and Vodacom fell sharply in trade on the JSE on Wednesday after Icasa announced new call termination rates.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":52419,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[26,36,175,28,3403,65,27],"class_list":["post-52418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mobile","tag-headline","tag-icasa","tag-jse","tag-mtn","tag-shameel-joosub","tag-telkom","tag-vodacom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52418","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\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52418"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52418\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52453,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52418\/revisions\/52453"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}