South Africa’s third-largest mobile operator Cell C has slammed bigger rival MTN’s move to take the regulator to court over the imminent termination rate cuts.

The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) last week postponed the implementation of the new mobile termination rate (MTR) glide path by two months after MTN challenged the new regulations in the South Gauteng High Court.

MTN served an urgent application, with 31 respondents, to have the gazetted termination rate implementation suspended as the group moved to review and set aside the new glide path.

“Dominant incumbents are typically defensive when any attempt is made to curb their otherwise abusive behaviour, but isn’t MTN taking it a bit far?” Cell C acting CEO Jose Dos Santos said in an opinion piece distributed to media.

The rates, which largely favoured smaller operators, such as Cell C and Telkom Mobile, through the aggressive asymmetry rates, would be implemented from May 1, as opposed to the initial date of March 1.

The final termination rates would see the rates charged to operators to carry calls between their networks halved to 20c this year, before declining to 15c in March 2015 and 10c by March 2016.

The asymmetry would be set at 44c, before declining to 42c in 2015, 40c in 2016 and 20c in 2017.

Dos Santos explained that asymmetry “is a common remedy” to make sure that competition was possible.

“… in numerous countries around the world asymmetry is afforded to new entrants, operators with defective or inefficient spectrum, operators which do not have sufficient scale to compete, and for other reasons deemed to be appropriate by the relevant regulator in those markets,” he explained.

MTN said the asymmetry rates were akin to cross-subsidising Cell C, which had about 9% revenue market share, and Telkom’s mobile arm, which had about 1% revenue market share.

Dos Santos, however, pointed out that MTN, with a current revenue market share of 35% in South Africa, had, along with rival Vodacom, benefitted from asymmetry for 20 years against fixed-line operator Telkom.

“On February 12, 2014, MTN claimed in its papers that Icasa has failed to follow due process in determining termination rates, however, it only wants Icasa to stop regulating mobile termination rates, even though the same process was followed to determine the fixed termination rates,” he added.

Citing the “excessive” prices for communications charged by MTN and Vodacom, Dos Santos believed that MTN was “not content to make [the] super-normal profits” it had over the past 15 years.

“MTN would have us believe that cash is being removed from the sector altogether, whereas it remains within the sector but just not with MTN,” he said, concluding that the operator should examine its own marketing strategy, cut costs or take steps to reduce “massive” dividend payments.