Telecom delays mobile price cut

The Commerce Commission says Telecom will start reducing the cost of mobile phone calls six months later than it originally planned, bringing it in line with Vodafone's price reduction timetable.

The commission today said it had been told by Telecom that it would be providing revised undertakings for the commission's investigation into mobile termination rates (MTRs), which have been criticised as being too expensive.

MTRs are the wholesale charges mobile phone companies charge for terminating calls or texts from other fixed or mobile networks.

While the undertakings have not yet been received, Telecom indicated the revised undertakings would align the start dates for mobile termination rate reductions with Vodafone's October 1 undertaking, rather than April 1, said telecommunications commissioner Ross Patterson.

Vodafone and Telecom have offered to slash their charges for routing calls to customers from their current rate of 15 cents a minute to 0.1 cents a second by the beginning of 2014 and do away with most charges for routing texts.

Earlier Telecom had offered to cut charges to 0.3c a second from April, but Vodafone would not cut rates that far until October.

The commission said Telecom's new date would not affect the commission's final report on regulation of MTRs to the Minister for Communications and Information Technology Steven Joyce, which was expected by the end of this month, he said.

The commission would not say whether or not it believed MTRs should be regulated, before the report was giving to the minister.

- NZPA