Table of International Accounting Rates

October 1998

International Accounting Rates

1 The attached table of international accounting rates is the latest to be published in accordance with the Statement on the Collection and Publication by Oftel of
International Call Information (July 1998) (the “Statement”).

2 The last set of rates was published in July.

3 Separate tables are given for IDD and for ISDN rates.

International Direct Dialled calls per minute
ISDN service, per minute

These tables are also available in Excel 97 format. Please click here to download the file.

Explanatory Notes

4 International accounting rates are the traditional basis of the payments made by international telephone operators to each other for the delivery of international calls.
The originating operator pays the terminating operator an agreed amount per minute, known as the settlement rate. The accounting rate is the sum of the settlement rate in each direction (usually the same) plus the costs of transit via a third country (if any).

5 This table shows only rates agreed on the bilateral correspondent agreement basis described above. In accordance with the Statement, rates for most operators
have not been published for routes which the Director considers to be “liberalised”. Since most of the routes for which the new licensees have accounting rate agreements in place are such “liberalised” routes, this means that few of the new licensees’ rates have been published. However, BT’s rates have been published on all routes.

6 In the case of Cable and Wireless Communications (CWC) rates on “liberalised” routes have not been published pending the outcome of the current review of
their Well Established International Operator (WEIO) status (see the Statement for a definition). Once the review is complete, rates will be published retrospectively for all of CWC’s routes on which they are deemed to continue to have WEIO status.

Notes

7 All rates are as of 1 October 1998, except BT whose rates are as at 27 August 1998. They are expressed to two decimal places.

8 Where an operator, in accordance with the accounting rate system, passes traffic to a third party outside the UK for transit to the final destination the route is
indicated in the “via” column. Transit rates are shown in the “transit” column, where available.

9 Where a footnote indicates that a higher accounting rate applies on certain routes up to a threshold level, that threshold is usually set at the level of traffic at the time
of the agreement. Since volumes are growing, this means that all new traffic is carried at the new, lower, rate.

10 Where a footnote indicates that a higher accounting rate applies on certain routes after a threshold level, that threshold level is usually set higher than the expected
level of traffic on that route, so that most new traffic will still be carried at the lower rate.

11 Currencies have all been converted into Special Drawing Rights (SDRs), whichever currency the actual agreement is written in. The exchange rate on 21
September 1998 was 1.23SDR to £1 sterling.

(1) USA - A higher accounting rate of 0.20 SDR applies to services with this country up until an agreed threshold level of traffic.
(2) Canada - A higher accounting rate of 0.12 SDR applies to services with this country up until an agreed threshold level of traffic.
(3) Switzerland - A higher accounting rate of 0.01 SDR applies to services with this country up until an agreed threshold level of traffic.
(4) Germany - A higher accounting rate of 0.12 SDR applies to services with this country up until an agreed threshold level of traffic.
* Denotes a liberalised route