Aitizaz Hassan ISLAMABAD, April 25 (INP-WealthPk): The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) plans to reduce 20% of Mobile Termination Rate (MTR) from July 2022 to June 2023 by charging Re0.40 per minute, reports WealthPK. The Authority announced that Re0.50 per minute would be charged for MTR from Jan 1 through June 30, 2022. The charges will be reduced by Re0.10 per minute from July 2022, while 30 paisa per minute MTR will be charged from July 2023 onwards. The PTA reduced MTR by 28.5% from Re0.70 per minute to Re0.50 per minute from 1st January 2022 to 30 June 2022.  According to a report, the PTA has come up with a strong determination to set a reasonable rate for cellular users. From November 16, 2018, MTR was reduced from Re0.90 per minute to Re0.80 per minute from January 2019 to December 2019, and to Re0.70 per minute from January 2020 onwards. For further review, the Authority issued a consultation paper on ‘Review of Mobile Termination Rate’ on July 2, 2021, providing international benchmarking analysis for determination of MTR in Pakistan. The paper noted that in 2018, the PTA was charging Re0.70 MTR per minute which was very high side to MTRs in the region and as per international best practices at that time. The report says four years back a regional comparison shows that Pakistan’s MTR at US cents 0.41 per minute was much higher than that in Bangladesh, India, Malaysia, and Sri Lanka, where the rate was US cents 0.16, 0, 0.24, and 0.25, respectively. Furthermore, most of countries were continuously decreasing their MTRs in 2018. The international benchmarking analysis undertaken in the paper shows that MTR calculated for Pakistan was between Re0.28 and Re0.30 as per Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) adjustment and between Re0.12 and Re0.24 as per Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) adjustments. This shows that MTR of Re0.70 per minute in 2018 was much higher than the calculated MTR using benchmarking. Therefore, the PTA proposed to Cellular Mobile Operators (CMOs) to reduce MTR and it will be determined Re0.30 per minute in 2023. All the CMOs, including Special Communication Organization (SCO) as well as landline and long-distance international operators, were requested to submit their comments and feedback on issues highlighted in the PTA’s review paper. An official hearing with all stakeholders was also held on September 20, 2021. After due process and considering operators’ comments, the PTA issued determination on MTR on November 24, 2021 and determined the following MTR for Pakistan and AJ&K and GB for all types of calls i.e., local, long distance and from other mobile networks or fixed networks. The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has defined termination rate as the “price charged by an operator for forwarding calls from other network customers to their own customers”. Similarly, MTR is the “price that a Cellular Mobile Operator (CMO) charges to another mobile operator for terminating its off-net calls on its network”.