Costs and Tariffs

Benchmarking

Successful tariff regulation is dependent upon a thorough understanding of the costs of providing a service, and the relationship between different service elements and cost drivers. In many liberalising economies, however, the necessary depth of experience is not available locally. Furthermore, given the economic and social importance of the telecommunications sector, decision-makers are likely to find themselves under pressure to produce hard evidence to support their position in answering questions such as:

What is being done in other countries?
What are the likely economic outcomes of a particular policy?

Drawing upon its wide experience of interconnection and tariff regimes, InterConnect Communications can provide authoritative fact-based analysis to act as a guide to decision-making, or to help support existing positions subject to industry contention or regulatory scrutiny. Where new policies or procedures are required, or where it is desired to review the continued fitness of existing provisions, InterConnect can undertake best practice reviews of appropriate tariff regulation regimes worldwide and from these identify key priorities for progress in specific countries. We can also perform benchmarking studies to compare existing or proposed tariff levels against suitable regional or international comparators and so provide a quantitative basis for operator strategies and regulatory decisions.

Typical projects include:

Evaluating a South Asian incumbent operator’s existing cost allocation model against established international best practice and identifying areas where improvements needed to be made in order to maintain industry parity;
Providing an analysis of regulatory principles and costing methodologies within the telecommunications sector to support a European competition regulator’s investigation into mobile call termination charges;
Undertaking an analysis and comparative evaluation of interconnection charges for fixed-line and mobile call termination charges and call transit charges in the Caribbean to support a regional regulatory authority in developing and applying a costing methodology;
Conducting a study of current pricing approaches in the global telecommunications industry to provide a recommended basis for a South-East Asian regulator to define suitable cost-based access and interconnection tariff regulations.

Key Service Areas:

Costs & Tariffs

More Information?

For more information about InterConnect's costing services, please contact Eric Tyson by phone on +44 (0) 1291 638400.