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Johannesburg - Once government is done with slashing cellphone interconnection rates, it will issue directives to cut the costs of broadband, international calls and short message service (SMS), which are all high by global standards.
Mamodupi Mohlala, the director-general of the communications department, said this week that the government had set itself a deadline of forcing down telecoms costs by the end of May next year.
"We have a programme of action that has specific timelines. We expect by May next year to have given a policy directive on all the services. This will include mobile interconnection, broadband, international calls, SMSes, and retail tariffs," Mohlahla said.
Mohlahla's department commissioned research group BMI Tech-Knowledge (BMIT) to analyse telecoms prices and their usage in five developing countries such as South Africa, Malaysia, Chile, Brazil and India.
What the study has found is that South Africa has relatively high mobile penetration, yet usage is very low due to expensive tariffs.
Government has already set the ball rolling on pushing for cellphone companies to reduce their interconnection fees, the charge they impose for transferring calls to other networks.
The mobile network operators charge interconnection rates at R1.25 a minute during peak hours.
The study found that the interconnection rate in South Africa is nearly as high as that of Brazil, which has the highest interconnection fee of the countries analysed.
In US dollar terms, Brazil's interconnection rate is 28.49c a minute compared with South Africa's fee of 27.06c. India has the lowest interconnection charge at 1.97c, followed by Malaysia's 4.56c.
South Africa and Brazil were also found to have the highest SMS costs. On average, South African cellphone users transmit about 28 SMSes a person per month and spend US 18c on them, while Brazilian subscribers send 37 SMSes for US 25c.
While South Africa has the cheapest international calls from a fixed line, the mobile international calls are a different story altogether. To make a call to the US from a mobile phone, South Africans pay US 64c a minute, while the Indians fork out 41c and the Brazilians 43c.
South Africa was found to have high broadband tariffs, but of all the countries surveyed its broadband has the slowest speeds. Internet broadband penetration is also low in South Africa.
This week, cellphone companies MTN, Vodacom, and Cell C, the country's smallest operator, appeared before Parliament's committee on communications, which has called for the reduction in interconnection rate to 60c (South African) before the end of the year.
The committee further wants the interconnection rate to be slashed by 15c a year over the next three years to a final rate of 15 cents.
Mohlahla said the government would see to it that this happened.
Now the ball is firmly in the regulator's court. The Independent Communications Authority of SA (Icasa) has been instructed by Communications Minister Siphiwe Nyanda to determine an interconnection fee that is not 50% higher than cost by the end of next month.
Arthur Goldstuck, who heads research firm World Wide Worx, said Icasa need to force cellphone companies to reduce or scrap mandatory charges, such as itemised billing, imposed on contract clients.
"The cellphone companies need to be transparent as how the cost of the call is broken up," Goldstuck said.
- City Press
