Four months after cutting wholesale termination rates for mobile calls and text messages, New Zealand’s Commerce Commission’s first mobile monitoring report shows a small increase in calls and text messages between mobile networks.

The report shows traffic across mobile networks has increased in the three month period from May – July 2011 and that the difference between the average costs of calls within networks and between networks has narrowed.

“While these early trends are promising, and are definitely heading in the right direction, there is still a long way to go,” said Dr Ross Patterson, Telecommunications Commissioner. “It’s what happens in the next few months that will be critical. We would expect to see an acceleration of these trends over the coming months.”

Between May and July 2011, cross network traffic increased by 1.2 percent for mobile calls and by 2.9 percent for text messages. At the same time, the price difference between on-net and off-net services decreased by 4.4 percent for mobile calls and by 3.4 percent for text messages.

As part of the Commission’s determination on mobile termination access services (MTAS), the Commission is collecting mobile data on a monthly basis which it will report on quarterly. The next report for the August – October 2011 period is due out in December 2011.