As we wrote last week, today is D-day for the Commerce Commission’s ruling on mobile termination rates.
We will of course share details of the ruling with our members as soon as they are available.
But in the meantime, for those of you who missed the reporting from last week’s 10th annual Telecommunications and ICT Summit, check out this article by the NBR’s Chris Keall that provides great background on why this issue is critical for the future of competition in the mobile market.
Chris writes that much hinges on the MTR decision for Two Degrees (previously New Zealand Communications), due to launch as our third mobile network operator in early August.
TUANZ has long argued that high MTRs are creating a barrier of entry to a third operator that is desperately needed to break the duopoly between Vodafone and Telecom.
This issue is of great importance to end-users as TUANZ estimates MTRs add $300 a year to each user’s phone bill - money that is creating a massive industry slush fund for the two mobile operators.
Therefore the NBR article is worth a read to understand this issue better, while the speech made by the Commission’s Anita Mazzoleni at last week’s summit is also essential reading.
[Caveat: Don’t be put off by the mugshot of our very own Ernie Newman at the top of the NBR article. Once you scroll down to get to the guts of the story, Ernie’s image will soon disappear at the top of the page!]