Recently, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) announced new (and lower) interconnect rates to take effect from December 31, 2009.

Interconnection rate represents the rate which a telecommunications operator pays to another operator on whose network a call is terminated.

The Guardian newspaper reports on this development:

With this development, call terminations on new entrants’ networks are graduated from N10.12 from December 31, 2009 to N8.20 in 2012 while call terminations on older operator’s networks is fixed at N8.20 over the same period.

Another major feature of the new rates is the determination of Interconnect Rates for Short Messaging Services (SMS), for the first time in the country.

It is clear that the NCC is weilding the new rates as a means to regulate tariff in the industry. Lower interconnect rates mean that network operators can further drop their tariffs, as tariffs are often directly related to interconnect rates.

In the backdrop of this, consumers across the country are hopeful for lower telecoms tariffs soon. How soon this will be is a different matter. However, with Glo promising to crash mobile data rates soon, courtesy of its new submarine cable and the new interconnect rates, 2010 is looking on the bright side for telecoms subscribers in Nigeria.