The Sunday Mail
The Postal Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of Zimbabwe is currently locked in negotiations with the country’s three mobile cellular network operators with a view to forcing them to slash their tariffs in the wake of a recent study showing that consumers are being overcharged.
It is envisaged that the talks will result in a 30 percent reduction in tariffs, the margin that is believed to being unjustly levied.
Presently, customers of the country’s mobile operators – Telecel, NetOne and Econet – are being charged US23 cents per minute for local calls.
After the negotiations charges on inter-network voice calls are expected to drop to as low as 16 US cents per minute.
However, Potraz acting director-general Mr Alfred Marisa said in an interview last week that the negotiations could take anything between one and two years to complete.
He said preliminary findings from a scientific Portaz study revealed that Zimbabwe’s mobile voice charges were 30 percent higher than they ought to be due to a variety of operational inefficiencies.
Potraz said the data tariffs were reasonable.
The current cost structure, which is based on the COSITU model, was developed in consultation with all the three mobile firms prior to dollarisation in 2009.
COSITU is a model for determination of costs and tariffs (including interconnection and accounting rates) for telephony services.
Experts say the model has become obsolete and has to be replaced with a new cost model – the Long Run Incremental Cost (LRIC).
LRIC is basically the additional cost in providing a service compared with the most efficient means of producing the remaining services on their own.
Long-run incremental costs are likely changes to the inputs of making a product such as the cost of raw materials.
“Technology has overtaken events and we had to come up with a new model effective for everyone,” explained Mr Marisa. “But reducing tariffs does not happen overnight. This can take on average a year or two to achieve the ideal charges. We do not want to produce shocks.”
