The interconnection rate should be lower than 25c, far below the 89c the cellular network operators had agreed to implement from the beginning of this month, says Research ICT Africa director Alison Gillwald.
Gillwald's organisation gave a presentation to Parliament's communications committee last year during its hearings into the cost of interconnection rates – a major factor politicians attribute to the high cost of cellular calls in the country. The presentation was heavily criticised by the network operators as being “unrealistic”.
MTN, Vodacom and Cell C subsequently reduced their interconnection rates – the cost of transmitting a call from one network to another – by 39c, from 1 March, from the 125c per minute peak rate. Telecommunications regulator, the Independent Communications Authority of SA (ICASA), approved the cut and is due to release its regulations in June.
Gillwald is convening a regulatory course, at the University of Cape Town (UCT). She says evidence from a benchmarking study conducted last year for the Namibian regulator, to determine its cellular interconnection rates, shows the cost-based interconnect rates of efficient operators are probably lower than 25c a minute.
“While in SA, by law, the regulator is required to conduct complex and lengthy studies before it can set the interconnection rate, in Namibia the regulator was able to move swiftly on the basis of benchmarking studies to reduce the interconnection rate between its operators by nearly 50%,” she notes.
