MOBILE phone use costs could come down by up to 40% within the next two years, if the National Markets and Competition Commission (CNMC) goes ahead with its current recommendations.
Calls would cost as little as 0.64 cents per minute by the year 2020 in accordance with the European Commission's requests.
The CNMC has been analysing call costs among all operators after receiving a letter from the European Commission giving it two months to do so.
The aim is to reduce end call costs by 40% - the tariff charged by network operators to virtual mobile operators, those which do not have their own network, which will reduce the final cost to the customer.
According to the CNMC, virtual operators will cut their own costs by call tariffs being reduced, because they have to pay main operators for use of the netork.
The current network price for mobile calls is 1.09 cents per minute, and the CNMC wants to see it reduced to 0.7 cents in 2018 and 0.66 in 2019, then finally to 0.64 cents by 2020.
Although customers are likely to be charged slightly more than this, because of the network and virtual operators needing to make a profit margin, they will still see a reduction in the price of making calls with their mobiles.
