Capacity Building for Interconnection Disputes between Fixed and Mobile Operators

The liberalisation of telecommunications markets in Sub-Saharan Africa led to increased competition on the provision and pricing of communication services. But, due to the lack of appropriate regulatory tools, newly established regulators are poorly equipped to arbitrate increasing interconnection disputes between competing operators.

The World Bank has built a cost model, prepared to provide Sub-Saharan Africa regulators and operators with a sound regulatory tool allowing the determination of accurate interconnection costs, thus facilitating the settlement of lengthy and costly interconnection disputes between fixed and mobile operators.(*) Based on bottom-up Forward Looking – Long Run Incremental Costs (FL-LRIC) cost modelling, this tool has been used to set interconnection call termination prices between 2002-2007 in 6 African countries and has been used by 18 African regulatory agencies for skill upgrading.

(*) Gille, L., Noumba Um, P., C. Rudelle and L. Simon (2002), “A Model for Calculating Interconnection Costs in Telecommunications,” The World Bank, Eds.

Source: Laurent Gille, Professor, Télécom ParisTech and Paul Noumba Um, Lead Economist, Economic Support Unit, Middle East and North Africa Region,World Bank Group.