Bulgaria’s dominant fixed-line carrier Bulgarian Telecommunications Company (BTC) pressed, in a letter signed by CEO Bernard Moscheni, for immediate decrease of fixed-to-mobile call rates by no less than 40 per cent.

The letter was sent to more than 500 recipients including Bulgarian MPs, European telecoms commissioner Viviane Reding and journalists.

Bulgaria’s telecoms regulator surprised the market in September by changing the schedule for gradual reduction of fixed-to-mobile call termination prices, adopted in January 2008.

The Communications Regulation Commission's (CRC) decision to increase the amount of the cuts and bring them six months closer came after BTC and Moscheni gave cellphone operators an ultimatum to cut prices and threatened to unilaterally change interconnection contracts.

BTC backed the regulator’s decision, dubbing it “the end of regulatory vacation” of mobile phone operators.

Mobiltel, Bulgaria’s biggest wireless carrier, accused the CRC of a cartel with BTC and defended the schedule agreed earlier. Globul, the other major mobile telecom, said the regulatory environment had been unpredictable in the recent months.

Under the new CRC schedule, fixed-to-mobile charges would fall by over 60 per cent in peak hours and by 66.9 per cent in off-peak hours over the two years to July 1 2010. Call termination between mobile networks would be slashed by 49.6 per cent in peak and 49.5 per cent in off-peak hours.

Mobile operators have cut wholesale call termination rates twice so far in the year, slashing fixed-to-mobile prices by 16.1 per cent for calls in peak hours and 20.77 per cent in off-peak hours.

Source: Dnevnik.bg