Just as we predicted, the established mobile operators are continuing to fight Ofcom’s move to reduce the cost of calling mobiles.

Everything Everywhere, T-Mobile and Orange’s joint venture, along with Vodafone have filed appeals to the Competition Appeals Tribunal in a bid to undo Ofcom’s move to lower charges. They argue that Ofcom has got both the model and their sums wrong. Essentially they want to be able to roll in other costs not related to call termination and argue that Ofcom is not allowing them to charge what it cost them to terminate calls, anyway.

The Terminate the Rate Campaign continues to call on Ofcom to reduce the cost of MTRs to their true cost, which we believe is lower than Ofcom has indicated.

Terminate the Rate Campaign members BT and Three have also lodged an appeal. Three’s appeal argues that the rates have been set too high. BT argues that mobile operators made windfall profits from MTRs that should have been addressed by a lower initial rate and that the four-year glidepath should be three years instead.

Both BT and Three’s actions support the direction of Ofcom’s MTR reductions and argue they should go further.