SADC TO REDUCE ROAMING CHARGES IN NEXT FEW YEARS

EZULWINI – Members states of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) have promised that roaming charges will be reduced in the next two to three years.

The reduction of the charges is part of a strategy which seeks to set limits on maximum roaming tariffs for both retail and wholesale process, over a three-year period.

Making his presentation yesterday, SADC Director of Infrastructure and Services, Remigious Makumbe, said the region had been concerned for some time with the high costs of roaming, which led to ICT ministers resolving to take radical steps to reduce them.

“The major realisation was that the tariff data for voice, messaging and mobile services for roaming were significantly higher than domestic national tariffs. The SADC Secretariat together with policy makers, regulators and mobile operators, conducted a number of studies on this,” Makumbe said.
He said the studies focused on issues such as wholesale and retail roaming tariffs charged by mobile network operators within the different countries and implications on covering both pre-paid and post service offerings. Other issues that were looked into included possible market and regulatory factors influencing international roaming wholesale and retail charges and regulatory barriers and their implications on current tariffs.

Makumbe also informed the participants that the SADC Secretariat, in collaboration with the Southern African Broadcasting Association (SABA) and member states, was working on developing content for the enormous capacity created by the Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) Migration through the downstream benefits of digital dividend.

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