Regulatory change – have your fixed to mobile costs dropped?
In July this year, the ACCC ruled the costs charged by mobile operators
to terminate fixed calls on their network should drop to 21 cents for the
rest of this year. The question is - has your provider passed on these
savings?
 When
the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) made its fixed
to mobile announcement, Macquarie Telecom was not only the first telco to
pass on the savings to customers, but in fact passed on the full savings
immediately rather than apply the staggered scale recommended by the ACCC.
This reduced mobile call rates for business and government users to an
industry low of 20 cents for the first five minutes for intra-company
fixed-to-mobile calls on the Macquarie
Telecom network.
This is below the ACCC recommended wholesale rate of 21 cents which is
operational until the end of 2004. As of January 1, 2005 the recommended
rate is 18 cents reducing to15 cents on 1 January 2006 and 12 cents at 1
January 2007.
But here we are four months down the track and many carriers have yet
to follow Macquarie Telecom's lead.
Save up to $20,000 per annum
For business users, fixed to mobile calls are often the largest portion
of their bill, sometimes amounting to around 40 percent of fixed line
spend. Macquarie
Telecom's new charges can result in savings of up to $20,000 per
year for businesses that spend around $100,000 per annum.
Lobbying government and regulators
Macquarie
Telecom will always pass on savings that result
from regulatory wins, as ultimately it ensures a more efficient market
where innovative providers thrive. We worked with other non-dominant
telecommunications carriers and industry groups to lobby government and
regulators on the need for mobile operators to drop their rates.
The fixed to mobile issue was a major target for Macquarie
Telecom – rates were outlandishly high by
international standards and ultimately that hampers our customers' ability
to compete.
We encountered similar challenges in the eighties, when Telstra was
charging around 25 cents for a local call. To put it in perspective, our
research showed the real cost of providing that service was as low as 7.65
cents per call.
While we have had some major regulatory wins in the last seven years,
there is still a lot of work to be done to ensure that Telstra's dominance
doesn't mean Australian customers are disadvantaged in global markets.
The offer
Macquarie Telecom intra-company Mobile Pricing Structure for calls
within the Macquarie network (exclusive of GST) – effective July 1, 2004:
-
20c flat rate for the first 5 minutes – mobile to mobile (24hours x
7 days)
-
20c flat rate for the first 5 minutes – mobile to fixed line
(24hours x 7 days)
-
20c flat rate for the first 5 minutes – fixed line to mobile
(24hours x 7 days)
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