VOD falling

[keng]

Seems like Mr Market doesn't think much of a Neotel purchase

[#2]

Tech Central - Icasa has decided to impose aggressive wholesale call price advantages for operators with less than 20% market share. That means victory for Cell C and Telkom Mobile and spells bad news for Vodacom and MTN

[Rams]

No,they all down....announcement made after close on Friday about termination call charges or something....will slash call charges by about 75%

[Jacques_1]

Dont care, they still all a long term hold.

[#5]

Nope, will slash termination rates by 75%, meaning all calls from outside VOD, terminating on the VOD network will have the interconnect fee slashed by 75%. So 2 things - 1) Icasa are not imposing, they are experimenting - not mandated yet (this debate has been going on for ages) and 2) users will end up doing what users have always done when call rates go down - they phone more. Net effect to VOD and MTN? Nobody knows

[kwagga]

Soon MTN and Vodacom will start shedding jobs. This government is exceptionally good at destroying things.

[Rams]

The consumer never really benefit from regulatory enforced price controls , ultimately the consumer pays the difference somewhere else.... So not much of an effect really in the medium to long term

[SimonPB]

huh, kwagga, you like paying more ??

these inter connect rates have already come down from about 125c to the current 40c, the new deal will take them down to 10c over next three years .. most examples around the world show that users still spend same amount but are able to make more calls ..

[kwagga]

The last thing we need in this country is more government intervention into the private sector. Let normal market conditions and competition prevail. Where is the spectrum allocation ICASA promised ? No, instead of granting the opportunity for these Telco's to provide better and faster services, they inflick forced cost cutting. Remember that next year is an election year. This government will roll out as many " ANC quick wins" as possible over the next year, irrespective of the damage they inflict over the longer term.