| Maltacom forced to pay reciprocal call termination rates to Melita
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| Written by HiVoltage |
Saturday, 14 April 2007
When a phone call has to go between different operators, the operator
from which the call originates has to pay the operator on which the
call terminates for the service. That is if a "Hello" subscriber makes
a telephone call to a Maltacom subscriber, Melita has to pay Maltacom a
rate which is regulated by MCA. Back in January, we reported
the latest rates that are being charged. The fact that operators pay
each other is a widely used practice, however, up till now, Melita was
paying Maltacom for call termination, while Maltacom was refusing
Melita's request that Maltacom pays Melita the same rate that Melita
pays Maltacom. It is worth mentioning here that where there are large
operators who almost have a monopoly in the market, the telecoms
regulators state that interconnection rates must be calculated on a
cost accounting and separation method, where the operator must present
the costs for every segment of its network operations in order to
extract the real wholesale cost of how much terminating a call really
costs. This is what is being done in the case of Maltacom. However,
since Melita's "hello" is in its infancy, and only a small number of
people are actually using their services, MCA does not require them to
use this same method, but only to offer fair and reasonable
interconnection rates that cannot be higher than those charged by
Maltacom.
As always happens when Maltacon is involved, Melita
had to file a complaint with MCA as Maltacom wouldn't agree to pay.
After several months, MCA came up with the decision that Melita's claim
is actually reasonable, and that Maltacom must pay Melita the same
price they charge them. Several reasons backing this decisions were
mentioned including what is being done in the EU, past MCA decisions,
etc. By now you might be thinking what this would mean to the customer.
The answer is "hopefully nothing". However, the fact that Maltacom must
now start paying for the services they use might actually have a
negative impact on Maltacom subscribers where they might try to
introduce higher rates. This probably also means that Maltacom's iPhone
users will no longer be able to call Hello subscribers for free - or so
we assume.
Link:
MCA Decision
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| Last Updated ( Saturday, 14 April 2007 ) |
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