Kingdom Communications, a KwaZulu-Natal-based underserviced area licensee (USAL), officially debuts its services today, despite difficulty in finalising interconnection agreements with network operators.
According to CEO Sifiso Mbatha, the USAL has been live since 1 September and more than 500 subscribers in the Zululand district are using the new service. However, they cannot call or receive calls from the Cell C network, as the network is barred to them.
Kingdom`s head of regulatory issues Vusi Ndlovu says the company approached Telkom, Vodacom, MTN and Cell C with the request to sign an interconnection agreement, as per provisions made in section 40 of the USAL`s licence terms. However, it could not reach an agreement with Cell C regarding the interconnection rates on community service telephone calls.
"This does not mean we have reached an agreement yet with the other providers. The difference is that while the other providers agreed to interconnect while negotiations continue, Cell C has decided to wait until an agreement exists before interconnecting," Ndlovu says.
The difficulty in reaching agreement lies in the fact that while the operators have been paying each other 6c to terminate calls, Kingdom would incur 70c to terminate such calls. Therefore, if the company agreed to the 6c rate, it would have to subsidise each call by 64c. That is not an economically viable way to run a business, he says.
Ndlovu says Kingdom has lodged a complaint with the Independent Communications Authority of SA (ICASA) against Cell C, as provided for by section 100 of its licence terms. It has requested that ICASA intervene and mediate in this deadlock.
Karabo Motlana, Cell C`s head of regulatory affairs, maintains there is no dispute with Kingdom. He says it`s important to "regularise the interconnection agreement" because such agreements determine the billing framework.
Ndlovu agrees it is important to have interconnection agreements in place. He points out that where there is no formal agreement, there is a danger of disputes arising due to a lack of agreement on billing rates.
Kingdom is officially launching its services at Ntinginono Environ Centre in Vryheid this evening.
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