Foreign telecommunications companies, telcos who wish to terminate calls to their counterparts in Nigeria, will now have to pay a minimum of $0.045 per minute to have the call go through.
This is as the Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC, has set a new termination rate for international voice services, which will take effect January next year.
The commission said that the new International Termination Rate, ITR for voice services paid by overseas telecom carriers for terminating international calls on local networks in Nigeria would be at $0.045.
Executive Vice Chairman of the Commission, Prof. Umar Danbatta said the new rate became necessary after feedback from different stakeholders supported a raise in the international termination rate.
He said: “The commission has carefully considered the information provided by stakeholders and taken a view on parameters and regulatory measures in the light of relevant information such as international experience, cost model results, the state of competition in the sector and the Nigerian macro-economic environment.”
The new rate is contained in the ‘Determination of Mobile International Termination Rate’ issued by the Commission on November 25, 2021. The $0.045 rate is the floor price for ITR services and shall take effect from January 1, 2022. The rate is to be paid in US Dollar to enable Nigerian operators receive an increasing rate in Naira terms to accommodate devaluation.
The commission, however, warned that no licensee shall charge and/or receive effective rate per minute below determined ITR floor rate. As such, payment discounts, volume discounts and any other concession that have the effect of bringing the effective ITR lower than the rate determined shall be deemed a contravention of the new determination and will attract sanctions in line with the Enforcement processes of the Nigerian Communications Regulations, 2019.
The ITR Floor is the minimum that can be charged. Operators will be free to negotiate a rate above the floor and this will be entirely left to commercial negotiation between the operators and international carriers/partners.
However, while the ITR only pertains to the cost of bringing traffic into Nigeria, Nigerian operators would continue to pay the regulated Mobile Termination Rate, MTR, the local termination rate among themselves.
The MTR of N3.90 for generic 2G/3G/4G operators and N4.70 for new entrant Long Term Evolution, LTE, operators determined in 2018, would continue to apply for local call terminations until a new rate was determined by the Commission pursuant to its powers as enshrined in the Nigerian Communications Act (NCA), 2003.