Parliament today threatened Vodacom with a subpoena to release details of its costs that led to the current interconnection rate of 125c per minute.
Vodacom CEO Pieter Uys and the company's executive director for regulatory and stakeholder affairs, Nkateko Nyoka, faced a grilling from an unusually united communications committee.
All committee members accused SA's largest mobile network operator of dodging the issue on why interconnection rates are so high.
ANC MP Johnny de Lange said: “I think it is totally appalling that they [Vodacom] thought they would get away with not answering our questions. I thought they would take us [Parliament] seriously and give inputs on their model. They [Vodacom] refused to give us the information that we require to do our jobs.
“Constitutionally, Parliament has a right of subpoena and we can force people to give us the information we require. We first ask politely, but then we have other means at our disposal. No one from the president to the private sector can refuse to give us the information we require,” he said.
I think it is totally appalling that they [Vodacom] thought they would get away with not answering our questions.
ANC MP Johnny de Lange
De Lange's outburst followed three attempts by Independent Democrats leader Patricia de Lille to get Vodacom to reveal how it came to charge 125c per minute for peak interconnection rates, 77c for the off-peak rate and 6c for the community service telephone rate.
Democratic Alliance MP Lindiwe Mazibuko accused Vodacom of not taking its marginal customers seriously and implying during its presentation that, if interconnection rates were cut, these poor customers would be disconnected.
“I took your comments as a threat to these marginalised people and I would like you to explain why you would not make money by lowering your interconnection rates. It is the poor users who you seem to imply are a burden, but they cannot afford the high interconnection costs and yet they are the very people who you are abusing,” she said.
More details
The MPs also wanted details on agreements between MTN, Vodacom and Telkom that set interconnection costs and determined the market structure.
Nyoka said the information required by Parliament, regarding the costs of interconnection, had already been lodged with telecommunications regulator ICASA.
“ICASA, in 2004, came through with a cost of allocation/chart of accounts manual and we initially resisted that because it changed the rules, but we have since complied. ICASA has all the necessary information,” he noted.
However, De Lange dismissed this argument, saying that if Parliament asked ICASA for the information, then it could not question Vodacom directly.
“We need to question you about this costing and, if necessary, we can agree to hold such a hearing in camera. But we will have further hearings on this issue,” he said.
The hearings continue. MTN and Cell C will give presentations tomorrow.
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