The Knesset Economic Affairs Committee today approved the nationwide inland roaming item in the telecommunications market reform, initiated by Minister of Communications Moshe Kahlon. The approval is a very important step in fostering competition, since without roaming, new mobile carriers cannot enter the market.
"This removes a major barrier. If the companies object, it's only in order to prevent competition. The companies will be paid, so they know that this is a barrier to competition, and I ask the MKs to help," Kahlon told the Economics Committee. "A carrier with an infrastructure needs about 2,000 antennas. We aim to achieve joint sites, but at the moment, under the present circumstances, we want to move forward on roaming so that companies can use existing antennas, for reasons of environmental protection, aesthetics, and of course to enable a new operator to enter the market."
The Economics Committee also decided that the cost of roaming will be based on the price reciprocal mobile connectivity - NIS 0.07 per minute - and that the price of data communications will be 0.65% of the connectivity price.
Ministry of Finance official Yehuda Saban told the Economics Committee that the objective of roaming on the one hand was to enable the entry of investors in a simple way, but also to ensure that they will invest in infrastructures and not to rely solely on roaming. He added that the cost of roaming was not intended to be very different from mobile reciprocal connectivity, and that they would be the roaming fees for the start of work by the new operator, in other words, NIS 0.07.
Yehiel Ben-Shoshan, who heads a group of investors that wants to enter the mobile market, said that the proposed law was unsuitable for Israel's reality. He said that the clause in the law which stipulates that a new carrier must have 10% deployment before being eligible for roaming on a network of one of the current mobile carriers was very problematic. He said that it was impossible to set up antennas in Israel, so consequently no new operator would enter the market without this issue being addressed. "As things stand now, the tender appears to be tailored for Mirs Communications Ltd.," he said.
Antitrust Authority official Roee Rosenberg said that roaming should be for an interim period until the new carriers deploy full infrastructures, in order to prevent carries becoming interdependent. "We therefore think that 10% deployment is an important mechanism to see the seriousness of the new candidates," he said. "They want to own frequencies, and to have an option not to fully deploy. Therefore, the attempt to lower the entry barrier is incorrect, and prior 10% deployment before roaming is proper and correct."
Mirs CEO Abrasha Burstyn said that roaming was a concept that existed worldwide, that it was not complicated, and that it was simple to implement on the basis of international standards. He said that the persons who wanted to lower the entry barriers had no real intention of deploying a nationwide infrastructure.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on November 29, 2010
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