The TelecomRedux exposé of the FCC’s investigation into mobile termination charges – at least we think it's an exposé as the only location where we’ve found reference to it is on the FCC’s own website, dated 14 October, 2004, and on those of a few specialised (non-commital) lawyers, is here on TelecomRedux – places the word “rates” on centre stage once more.

There are all sorts of terms applicable to fiscal value. The tech industry tends to play fast and loose with these. Thus there are ‘costs’, which tend to be more imagined than real when the regulators are likely to look in. There are ‘prices’, which tend to be more imagined than real when the customers are likely to look in. There are margins, which tend to be more imagined than real when the shareholders are likely to look in. And there are charges, which tend to be more imagined than real when a company is pleading poverty.

And then there are “rates”.

It’s a fix
‘Rates’ are price schedules rather than prices per se. Rates are by their very nature ‘ratified’, which means that they are regulated or sanctioned or approved. Even the colloquial term, ‘the going rate’, implies the existence of a price-fixing cartel for anything from the fee for cleaning windows to that for purchasing a house. It’s not simply a ‘price’, it’s a "rate".

Typically, the cartel which fixes rates in the telecom world comprises operators and regulators. In the mobile world, the uneasy relationship between these two camps now seems set to come under additional scrutiny if the US acts upon its instincts concerning irregularities across the world. They appear to be working along the right lines, at any rate…
Jim Chalmers