East African Business Week

KIGALI, RWANDA -  Rwanda's telecom regulator has reduced the interconnect fee between mobile operators by Rf4.21 (US$ 0.00711149) anticipating that mobile operators will reduce the cost of calling across all networks.
Beginning July, the interconnection fee was reduced to Rf35.79 ($0.0605) per call from Rf40($0.0675676) and it will continue to go down gradually.
The regulator believes that by lowering the cost of interconnect; mobile operators could open up lower call rates across all networks.  
The existing operators MTN and Tigo welcomed the move to lower the interconnection fee but didn't say whether they were willing to reduce call rates from one network to another.
Currently, each operator charges Rf90($0.152027) per minute if its subscriber calls a competitor’s network. This is extremely high compared to less than Rf20($0.0338) per minute on Tigo to Tigo and Rf1.5($0.00254) or less per second on MTN to MTN network.
Telecom analysts believe that since the interconnection fee has gone down, the newly licensed mobile operator Airtel could enter the market with much lower call tariffs thus engineering a serious price war against the existing operators.
Airtel was licensed to operate in Rwanda on September 8, 2011, after paying $30 million for the license and pledging to invest over $100 million in its network over the next three years of its operation in the country. 
The company with operations in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and DR Congo as some of the countries trading with Rwanda has so far appointed a Managing Director for its Rwanda Operation and it is expected to  commercially launch early next year.
It promised to offer affordable and innovative products. With the telecom license, Airtel will offer voice on 2G platform and data as well as voice and video services on 3G platform.  Statistics from the regulator Rwanda Utilities Regulatory Agency (RURA) indicate that active mobile subscriptions reached 4.2 million as of August translating into a mobile penetration rate of 39.6 %. Rwanda seeks to clock six million mobile users by end of 2012, according to RURA.