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Tanzania holds Public Hearing to solicit opinion on proposed telecom interconnectivity rates

by Milicent Atieno
tanzania

The Tanzania Communications Regulatory Authority (TCRA) will be holding a public hearing. Where the inputs of the general public and any stakeholder in the telecommunication industry on the upcoming price cuts on interconnection rates for network operators in the country is expected to be given.

TCRA says the current termination rate of TZS 26.96 per minute for voice calls will expire on December 31st 2017. The hearing was held today starting 9 AM local time at the TCRA head office in Dar es Salaam.

The regulator will set new rates effective on the first day of year 2018. The new rates will see voice call termination rate drop to TZS 15.60. TCRA has further plans to drop the rates to TZS 10.40 come January 2019, then TZS 5.20 in 2020. The regulator has an even more ambitious plan to drop it further to TZS 5.20 and TZS 2.00 come 2021 and 2022 respectively.

According to report released in September this year by the regulator, the total traffic measured in minutes for Tanzania during the Q3 of 2017 reach 14,933,886,483 minutes. That is for all calls across all the networks and on both local and international calls.

The proposed new termination rates will apply to all the seven telecom operators operating in Tanzania; Airtel, Tigo, Vodacom, Halotel, Smart, TTCL, and Zantel.

Tanzania becomes the third African country where the government has stepped in to regulate the prices charged by the telecommunication players when handling calls from other competing network operators. The other two are Nigeria and South Africa.

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