New mobile tariff model on cards

has started the development of a new pricing model for telecoms, following stakeholder consultations on the structure and costs of the range of telecoms services.
“We are in the process of coming up with a forward-looking cost model called Long Run Incremental Cost (LRIC) which will be used for tariff determination.
“We have already done some consultative workshops with various stakeholders that include consumer groups, industry, operators and academia to come up with common positions on how the model should be developed, taking into account the various concerns of these stakeholders,” he said.
LRIC is basically defined as the additional cost in providing a service compared with the most efficient means of producing the remaining services on their own.
Long-run incremental costs are likely changes to the inputs of making a product, such as the cost of raw materials. For example, if making a product requires a significant amount of oil, and oil prices are thought to be likely to decline, then the long run incremental cost is also likely to decline.
Additionally, as long as some costs overlap, the LRIC of a service is less than its stand-alone costs.
Implementation of the LRIC model for the local telecoms sectors will therefore likely result in decline in the tariff charges.
The development comes at a time when Information Communication Technology Minister Nelson Chamisa has been calling for reasonable charges for mobile services.
The minister told stakeholders at the ICT Africa Conference last week that his ministry was currently working with Potraz to ensure the tariffs of both voice calls and data are revised to “reasonable rates”.
Zimbabwe has three mobile telecommunications companies — Econet Wireless Zimbabwe, Telecel Zimbabwe  and NetOne — and the average rate of a mobile call from one network to another locally is US$0,25 per minute.
Calls within the network are priced at 23 cents per minute. As required by law, however, billing on all mobile networks is on a per-second basis.
The 3G mobile broadband services provided by Econet are generally priced at 15 cents per megabyte of data used.
Telecel and NetOne charge 11 cents and 7 cents per megabyte (out of bundle) respectively.
An earlier regional comparison carried out by Potraz showed that local mobile tariffs were generally competitive.
Zimbabwe’s mobile tariff averages 24 cents per minute compared with the regional average of 29 cents per minute.
Some regional mobile operators’ charges per minute are as follows: Swaziland’s MTN 38c, Mozambique’s Vodacom 24c, Namibia’s CellOne 20c, Kenya’s Celltel 30c, South Africa’s MTN 38c, and Cell C (also of South Africa) 33c.