Nairobi, Kenya
Mobile service provider Yu has today challenged Communications Commission of Kenya (CCK) to speed up for the implementation of the reduced mobile termination rates to enable telecom operators offer affordable rates on all type of call charges.
Yu’s Country manager Madhur Taneja said that Yu mobile is looking for the day when CCK will bring down calling rates from sh.2.21 to sh.1.44 a minute. He said that the delayed implementation of the reduced MTR is a big blow to the Industry and younger players like YuMobile who have continued to push for consumer benefit by driving affordability are at loss.
“On 1st July 2012 the new mobile termination rates were supposed to have become effective, but up to date they haven’t been implemented,” said Taneja during a press briefing in at Hotel Intercontinental on Wednesday.
The MTR (fee a mobile phone operator pay another operator to terminate a call in their network) was halved to Ksh 2.21 in July 2010 when the interconnect determination was issued by CCK.
It was supposed to go down to 1.44 in 2011, 1.15 in 2012 and 0.99 in 2012 but following a presidential directive last year, the MTR was frozen.
CCK has also demonstrated that whenever there is a reduction in the mobile termination rates and subsequently cheaper calling rates, the subscriber base grows faster than usual as witnessed in 2010 when the halving of the MTR led to a 9.5% growth in subscriber numbers.
According to the latest CCK report, YuMobile has a subscriber base of over 2.8M subscribers and offers subscribers competitive call rates.
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