The Malawi Communications Regulatory Authority (MACRA) has announced a new set of maximum wholesale termination rates for voice and SMS services for the next three years. Under the glidepath, the maximum termination rate for voice services has been set at USD0.0024 per minute from 1 January 2023 and will fall to USD0.0019 twelve months later and again to USD0.0015 on 1 January 2025. For SMS, the rate was established at USD0.001 at the start of this year and is scheduled to fall to USD0.0005 on 1 January 2024 and USD0.0003 twelve months after that. MACRA says the new rates are now amongst the lowest in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region.

In other news, The Times reports that MACRA has given fixed line operators Malawi Telecommunications (MTL) and Access Communications (ACL) until May this year to pay their outstanding licence fees. The pair allegedly face the revocation of their licences if they fail to pay a combined figure of MWK3.3 billion (USD3.2 million) by that date.

Source: Commsupdate