The Swedish regulator, PTS, has ordered TeliaSonera, the Swedish incumbent, to cut prices on a number of wholesale telephony and broadband services. This is to increase market competition and choice for customers. The regulator is now working on setting up rules to encourage competition in the fixed-line market. Therefore, as TeliaSonera is a market leader, the PTS has now ordered the incumbent to allow other operators to purchase or lease products in the fixed network at cost prices. PTS is going to calculate and decide the price levels of the regulated products. This is not the first time that the PTS has reprimanded TeliaSonera for charging excessive prices for its products. Jóhanna Helgadóttir – Senior Consultant – jhelgadottir@strategyanalytics.com

On the 1st of April, Ofcom the UK telecoms regulator, published proposals which will make it considerably cheaper to call mobile phones from the landline. The mobile termination rates (MTRs) are the wholesale charges that operators make to connect calls to each others’ networks. Ofcom proposes a plan that sees MTRs fall from around 4.3p per minute as they are today to 0.5p per minute by 2015. See table below. The plan as laid out by Ofcom sees MTRs for Vodafone/O2/Orange/T-Mobile develop thus: • 2010/11 4.3p, • 2011/12 2.5p, • 2012/13 1.5p, • 2013/14 0.9p and • 2014/15 0.5p. For H3G the plan is as follows: • 2010/11 4.6p, • Then it follows the same plan as above For other mobile communications providers the plan will be set out in a fair and reasonable manner. According to Ofcom 32.7 million UK homes and businesses will benefit from cheaper calls to mobile from a landline. Ofcom last set the MTRs in 2007. The proposal will give both landline and mobile operators more flexibility to design competitive call packages, which will ultimately benefit residential and business customers. Teligen monitors price developments of this sort in its monthly updates of T-World Fixed http://www.strategyanalytics.com/default.aspx?mod=NavigationHeader&a0=202&a1=0 Jóhanna Helgadóttir – Senior Consultant – jhelgadottir@strategyanalytics.com