Could three times be the charm? Twice before, Vodafone and Telecom have wriggled out of Commerce Commission attempts to regulate their mobile pricing.

Today, the ComCom has announced a third investigation into whether mobile termination rates and national roaming charges should be regulated. This time the effort must be pushed through says The Telecommunications Users Association of New Zealand (Tuanz), which represents hundreds of corporate telco customers.

"Here we go again," says Tuanz chief executive Ernie Newman, who says it is now five years since his association first asked for regulation of mobile charges.

The ComCom's report, due in February next year, is a foregone conclusion, Mr Newman says, “Regulators everywhere know that mobile termination rates are a classic case of market failure, and have moved to regulate them. The Commerce Commission has twice reached the same logical conclusion as its international peers, and we have no doubt it will do so this third time. "

Mobile termination rates are the amount telcos charge each other when calls or txts cross from one network to another. Termination rates are passed on to the customer - at an inflated rate, say critics.

In August 2005, then Telecommunications Commissioner Douglas Webb, operating under the ComCom, recommended to Communciations Minister David Cunliffe that mobile termnation rates be regulated. Cunliffe concurred, but the recommendation was ultimately rejected by the government, which said the investment viability of Telecom and Vodafone's 3G mobile networks had to be protected.

In April 2007, Telecom and Vodafone again escaped a recommendation for regulation, that time by promising to voluntarily reduce their termination rates from 20 cents a call to 12 to 14 cents over the next five years. Newman says the deal still left New Zealand with the highest charges in the OECD as a result of the unregulatied Telecom and Vodafone "duopoloy".

“The big question is whether, this time round, the government will support its regulator’s specialist conclusions,” Mr Newman says.

Telecom spokeswoman Rebecca Earl says her company will fully cooperate with the investigation but that "It’s fair to say though that having agreed a mobile termination rates Deed Poll with the Government only last year, we are naturally disappointed that the Commission has taken this step to re-investigate the regulation of these rates.”

“Tuanz is utterly frustrated at the time this issue has been around, the discord on this matter between the commission and the government, and the consequent excessive cost passed onto business and residential users over many years.  Termination charges flow directly into the price of calls to mobiles from both fixed and mobile phones. This mounts up to a huge cost to users in the course of a year, especially business users who make many calls every day."

TUANZ is calling for the incoming Communications Minister to bide by the ComCom's findings this time around and not "bow to vested interest pressure from the beneficiaries of these excessive prices.”