The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has officially initiated a critical review of the telecoms industry’s interconnection prices, a development that marks the regulator’s first attempt to adjust the cross-network pricing framework since the current policy was established in 2018.
Speaking at an NCC stakeholders’ consultation forum on Tuesday, Omotayo Mohammed, Head of the Competition and Tariff Unit at the NCC, said that the move is driven by an urgent need to align industry regulation and pricing with emerging market realities. He emphasized that the exercise goes beyond a routine tariff review, representing a strategic recalibration of the sector’s financial plumbing.
The review forms a structured process to reassess the wholesale pricing rules that govern payments between network providers for routing and completing voice calls. To ensure a data-driven approach, the NCC announced it is collaborating with international consultancy firm KPMG to conduct the study.
At the heart of this review are Mobile Termination Rates (MTRs), the regulated fees that one Mobile Network Operator (MNO) pays to another to complete calls that cross network boundaries.
For example, if an MTN subscriber calls an Airtel user, MTN must pay Airtel a fixed termination fee. This fee compensates Airtel for utilizing its network infrastructure to carry and complete the call for the MTN customer.
Because these wholesale costs are baked into what consumers pay, MTRs heavily influence retail call prices, market competition, and how aggressively operators invest in their network infrastructure.
With the last determination issued nearly eight years ago, the new review is expected to address long-standing operator concerns regarding inflation, rising operational costs, and the shifting dynamics of voice traffic in Nigeria’s evolving digital economy.