The Independent Communications Authority of SA (ICASA) published an open letter in the Sunday Times, thanking South Africans for support and commenting on the recent judgement on mobile termination rates (MTRs).
The South Gauteng High Court last week found the MTR structure to be "unlawful and invalid", following applications by MTN and Vodacom to have the structure reviewed.
However, the order of invalidity was suspended for six months and ICASA's letter outlines the implications of the judgement.
The full letter reads as follows:
"ICASA thanks South Africans from all walks of life for the support in the recent High Court challenge by operators against its attempts to reduce the cost to communicate and would like to take this opportunity to comment on the judgement and its implications.
"In February 2014, ICASA published regulations that reduced the wholesale termination rate. These are the rates that operators pay each other to call subscribers across networks. These regulations had two objectives, to:
- Reduce the cost of communications in the public interest.
- Improve competition in the mobile and fixed-line markets.
"The regulations set a call termination rate of 20c for calls to larger operators and a rate of 44c for calls to smaller operators.
"MTN and Vodacom challenged the regulations in court, because they considered them unlawful and ICASA opposed this application.
"Judge Mayat, who heard the application, held that the regulations, including the 20c rate set in the regulations, are unlawful. However, she exercised her discretion and held that the regulations should come into effect for six months to allow ICASA, during this period, to promulgate new regulations and set new call termination rates.
"The result for consumers:
- Call charges for consumers will not necessarily come down. ICASA hopes that the operators will set lower call charges because the interconnection rates that they pay each other have in some cases been reduced.
- If call charges are reduced by the operators, the operators are not required to reduce call rates by the full amount of the reduced interconnection rate. ICASA hopes, however, that the operators pass on the benefit of the new call termination rates to consumers to the greatest extent possible."
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