Press Releases

Budapest, January 13, 2004 12:00

The fees of the new reference unbundling, interconnection and leased line interconnection offers were significantly reduced.

According to the Hungarian Telecom Law service providers with significant market power have had to apply the long run incremental costing (LRIC) methodology since January 1, 2003.

In June 2003, a Ministerial Decree (No 9/2003) was issued by the Ministry of Informatics and Communications prescribing a new cost of capital and detailed requirements of the LRIC methodology. To comply with this new decree, Matáv filed a new reference interconnection and leased line interconnection offer (MARIO) and reference unbundling offer (MARUO) on August 18, 2003. The cost of capital prescribed for Matáv has changed from 19% to 15%.


Changes to the interconnection and leased line interconnection offer

- As described by a Government Decree (No 125/2003, issued in August), service providers with significant market power have to supplement their reference offers with the conditions of number portability. The filed and approved reference offer includes the ported number installation service, which provides the ability for customers to transfer their telephone service to another service provider without a change of telephone number. According to the decision of the Arbitration Committee (AC), the ported number installation fee, which is a new fee in MARIO, is HUF 4,229 per ported number.
- Based on the AC’s decision, certain related services and their fees were excluded from the scope of the RIO including the cabinet provisioning, preselection order examination and the supplement of subscribers' traffic data.


1. Traffic pricing

- According to the Decree 3/2002 of the Ministry of Informatics and Communications, the additionally applicable access deficit surcharge (which has been HUF 1/min since February 15, 2003) is eliminated from January 1, 2004.

- The impact of the recently approved interconnection fees will be an average decrease in tariffs of 16% compared to the former levels. The table below sets out the new and former per minute interconnection rates excluding VAT:

Local origination fee (HUF/min): peak 3,70 (old 4,48); off-peak 1,42 (old 1,65)

Regional origination fee (HUF/min): peak 4,87 (old 5,94); off-peak 1,87 (old 2,19)

National origination fee (HUF/min): peak 5,69 (old 6,89); off-peak 2,18 (old 2,54)

Local termination fee (HUF/min): peak 3,20 (old 3,93); off-peak 1,23 (old 1,45)

Regional termination fee (HUF/min): peak 4,38 (old 5,38); off-peak 1,67 (old 1,99)

National termination fee (HUF/min): peak 5,19 (old 6,34); off-peak 1,99 (old 2,34)

- The cost based regional and national transit fees decreased to HUF/min 0.94 and HUF/min 1.58 respectively, for both peak and off peak calls from HUF/min 1.18 and HUF/min 1.92.

2. Pricing of related services and leased line interconnection services

- The monthly fees for the IC link have decreased by 6-7%, while the IC link one-off installation fee decreased by 6%.
- Fees for pre-selection and call-by-call services decreased by 5% on average. The one time installation fee for preselection is HUF 4,073 per subscriber.
- With respect to reference leased line services, installation fees are HUF 87,929 and HUF 58,729, respectively. Monthly fees for the different services vary between HUF 59,000-295,000.
- According to the AC’s decision collocation fees are determined in RIO as follows:
Matáv must support the costs of providing the minimum requirements by means of invoices. If no invoices are available, Matáv should document the costs for the Partners based on a technical survey.


CHANGES TO THE UNBUNDLING OFFER

- In average RUO fees have decreased by 6%
- Net monthly local loop fees are set out in the table below:

Monthly fee for full local loop unbundling 2917 HUF (old 3544 HUF).
Monthly fee for partial local loop unbundling 2844 HUF (old 3290 HUF)

- The one time examination fee for a local loop decreased from HUF 39,099 to HUF 37,052.
- The one-off fee for furnishing the unbundling with a 100 loop capacity block amounts to between HUF 83,175 and HUF 394,710. The one-off connection fee for the full or partial unbundling of the loop decreased to HUF 23,350 and HUF 24,886 respectively.
- Based on the AC's decision, certain related services and their fees were excluded from the scope of the RUO including disconnection, order cancellation, technical supervision and unjustified repair request.
- According to the AC's decision collocation fees are determined in RUO as follows:
Matáv must support the costs of providing the minimum requirements by means of invoices. If no invoices are available, Matáv should document the costs for the Partners based on a technical survey.

According to the new Hungarian telecom law, the calculation method for RUO fees should be brought in line with the fully distributed historical cost (FDC) methodology in the next reference offer to be filed on January 15, 2004.