Azerbaijan, Baku, Jan. 15 / Trend H.Valiyev /
The debt of the CATEL Company (CDMA operator) to the Azercell Telekom Company on inter-operator connections stands at 405.237.79 manats, without VAT, the Azercell Company told Trend on Tuesday.
"Due to the late payment of debt, default interest to the sum of 20.261.85 (five per cent of the amount of the debt) has accumulated. As a result, the total amount of the CATEL Company's debt to Azercell increased to 425.498.9 manat," the company said.
The Baku Appeal Court granted Azerbaijani mobile operator Azercell Telekom Ltd.'s request on the economic dispute with CATEL on the issue of inter-operator connections.
As stated in Azercell, at present decisions of neither the trial court nor the court of appeal are final. The court's decision on economic disputes will take effect if the respondent company does not submit an appeal against the court's final decision.
The decision on unification of rates on inter-operator connections of the CDMA wireless network with GSM was adopted by the Azerbaijani Communications and Information Technologies Ministry in late 2010. The main purpose of using a single connection tariff with CDMA operators is creating equal conditions for development.
The rate on the connection determines the amount one operator pays to another per minute of conversation outside its network.
Currently the rate on such a connection (cost of a final minute of conversation) between GSM mobile operators is 0.02 manat in Azerbaijan. The cost per minute of inter-operator connections was reduced from 0.05 to 0.02 manat in April 2009.
There are three GSM standard operators Azercell, Bakcell and Azerfon and five CDMA standard operators Aztelekom, Baku Telephone Communications, Ultel, Aztrank and Naxtel in the mobile communications market of Azerbaijan today.
The CDMA wireless network of CATEL ceased its operation on April 1, 2011, which led to the isolation of phone owners who work in that standard from the network (number with 417, 418 and 415 index and numbers of FONEX mobile network, starting with the 040 zoning code).
The official exchange rate on January 15 is 0,7849 AZN / USD.
