Interconnection Rate Benchmarking: How Namibia dropped its termination rates by nearly half

Regulators across Europe and Africa agree that termination rates should be based on the forward-looking long-run incremental cost (LRIC) of termination of an efficient operator. Termination rates at cost of termination will remove economic distortions witnessed in Europe and Africa today and prepare the markets for a smooth transition to IP-based Next Generation Networks. The presentation reviews the latest developments and trends for interconnection rates and shows how interconnection benchmarking was used in Namibia to set termination rates. Implementing LRIC is challenging, expensive, time-consuming, and the required information is often not available in developing countries. The benchmarking methodology benchmarks termination rates, termination costs and regulatory best practice.

The correct date for the Seminar is Tuesday, 28 July 2009 at 4pm for 4.30pm

Please note the the correct RSVP address – mndlovu@the-edge.org.za.

The seminar deals with the case study of Namibia, where the Namibian Communications Commission (NCC) has recently introduced a charge structure which reduces interconnection rates to N$0.60 For background reading, visit: http://tinyurl.com/interconnect-namibia. The Namibian Interconnection benchmarking study commissioned by the NCC can be found at: http://www.ncc.org.na/page.php?pn=publication.

The link to the report is: http://www.ncc.org.na/page.php?pn=publication

Our contact numbers are available here: http://lirneasia.net/contact-lirneasia/.

–Nirmali

thks

Kapila