Directive forces Mauritius telecom rates to drop

The Information & Communication Technologies Authority (ICTA) of the small Indian Ocean island of Mauritius has asked telephone operators to adopt new rates for the mobile and international segments.

New rates have been in force since Wednesday. The new rate regime comes in the wake of a telecommunication directive issued on April 30, which ordered an 87 rupee (US$0.032) reduction of the Interconnection Usage Charge (IUC) for fixed and mobile networks, paid by operators for every minute of communication.

In its directive, the ICTA invited the operators to submit proposals to revise their retail tariffs resulting from the reductions in the IUC, so that customers could benefit from them. In the event of inadequate responses from the operators, the authority specified it "may intervene in the interest of the general public."

That's exactly what it did for mobile telephony. Dissatisfied by some of the submissions, the telecom sector regulator decided earlier this week to pass the whole 87 cent reduction on to users on calls from mobile to fixed telephones. It now costs 3.48 rupees (US$ 0.118) per minute instead of 4.35 rupees, using a prepaid card.

But the most spectacular reductions concern international telephony. Before liberalization, in 2003, calling someone in Europe or in the U.S. used to cost at least 30 rupees per minute, depending on the final destination. Five years later, seven operators are offering their services to the Mauritian market. Competition caused prices to drop drastically. Before this order, it was possible to call a relative for about 6 rupees per minute. Since Wednesday however, some destinations can be reached for 4 rupees per minute.

"Liberalization in the telecommunications sector brings major tariff reductions along. What happened this week is a concrete example. Now, the Authority should think about introducing a real liberalization process in other segments like Internet that is still controlled by one operator, Mauritius Telecom," said Michel Rigot, managing director of Outremer Telecom in Mauritius.