ACCRA (Xinhua) – Ghana’s telecoms regulator, the National Communications Authority (NCA), announced on Tuesday the introduction of new interconnection rates for telecommunication companies operating in the country.
A statement posted on the official NCA website said the new rates, effective from the first of last month till 2014, had been fixed based on prevailing market conditions in addition to submissions made by the operators.
Apart from the incoming international transit interconnections which would remain the same, all other rates would change over the period between this year and 2014. The new regime provides that the interconnect termination rates for voice calls originating from fixed and mobile networks in Ghana shall remain at the current 0.05 cedis (about 0.03 U.S. dollar) a minute this year.
The rates, according to the statement, will go down to 0.045 cedis (0.028 dollar) next year before dropping to 0.04 cedis (0. 025 dollar) in 2014. “The interconnect termination rate for SMS on all mobile networks in Ghana shall also remain at the current rate of 0.007 cedis (0.004 dollar) for this year but glide down to 0.006 cedis (0.0037 dollar) and 0.005 cedis (0.0031 dollar) for the years 2013 and 2014 respectively,” the statement added.
The NCA said it had also decided to implement an asymmetry interconnection termination to ensure that new entrants and any operator with less than five percent of total market share were able to compete favorably on the market. This asymmetric interconnect termination rate regime applies to new entrants as well as operators with less than five percent of subscriber market share, the NCA said. There are already five telecoms operators in the Ghanaian market, with four operating GSM and one on CDMA. (Xinhua)
