MTC Namibia responds to allegations of excessive interconnect charges

MTC refutes the allegations of exorbitant interconnect charges and unfair treatment by Telecom Namibia. The rates in Namibia were offered to MTC by Telecom Namibia and Cell One, contrary to the claims by both parties when they have finally woken up to realise that their businesses are bleeding from mistakes they have made in the past.

MTC expects Telecom Namibia to request a formal audience to negotiate any pricing issues directly instead of using the media platform to do so.

Telecom Namibia issued a media release on 21 August 2008 in which Telecom makes allegations against MTC with regard to the charges for interconnection and international calls. Even though it has never been MTC's intention or style to prescribe to other operators how to run their companies, MTC believes that such operators are entitled to their opinions, but they also have an obligation to give accurate information to the public in a most objective and unselective fashion. In that light, MTC wishes to respond to Telecom Namibia's allegations as follows:

It is important to state that the interconnect regime currently prevailing in Namibia is very closely benchmarked to the models in the SADC region, and near to European models where pricing is often lower in several cases than in Europe or South Africa.

The interconnecting regime prevailing was proposed by Telecom Namibia in 2003 and was revisited between TN and Cell One in March of 2007. Thereafter both parties made their proposals to MTC, which proposal was accordingly accepted. MTC never imposed the regime, but accepted what was proposed by both Cell One and Telecom Namibia.

MTC has pointed out on several occasions to both the minister of ICT and to Namibia Communications Commission that MTC prefers and supports a serious dialogue between the operators on the model to be agreed on under the auspices of the Regulator.

According to MTC's approach, such a model should be benchmarked against the model(s) prevailing in the SADC Region. This should take into consideration the peculiar circumstances of Namibia's telecommunication industry and market by looking at issues such as the number of inhabitants per square kilometre and the GDP per capita being very low compared with South Africa or Botswana, which factors are very important considerations to mobile operators.

MTC strongly believes an important dialogue on an issue such as this one, which translates into contractual obligations between parties, has to be addressed and conducted at the right forum and between the relevant parties, not through public forums and press statements.

MTC charges the lowest price on all its on-net or MTC-to-MTC calls (in the SADC Region), which translates into more than 85% of all mobile users in Namibia or more than 900 000 Namibians.

This is only possible because MTC strongly believes that in doing so the customers will stay with the operators that offer them value for money at the rates that are competitive and affordable.

For every call originated from MTC to international destinations, MTC pays a large percentage to Telecom Namibia, because Telecom Namibia enjoys an unhindered statutory monopoly of this service.

Therefore, MTC cannot understand why Telecom Namibia has opted to distort the facts and feed the public with selective information that is neither in the best interest of the customers or that of the industry as whole.

Does Telecom Namibia have a licence to operate Switch? Notwithstanding Telecom's desperate attempts to abuse the vacuum left by the current legislation on the telecommunications industry, it must be stated that under the current law Telecom Namibia has no licence to offer mobile services. Furthermore, nobody briefed or appraised anyone on how and under which rules Switch is being operated.

It is, therefore, MTC's position that our service and the cost thereof are competitive and affordable since they are benchmarked along the models prevailing in the SADC region and, to a large extent, to the European market as well.

MTC wishes to assure its customers and the Namibian population as a whole that it shall continue to render quality services at affordable rates so it remains the preferred and number one mobile operator in Namibia.