HAKOM decided on June 10 that the leading telecom companies in Croatia must reduce the wholesale price of mobile communications in three stages by 1 January 2015.
Under the decision, aligned with European Union regulations, the wholesale price of HT, Vipnet and Tele 2 mobile conversations will dip from 19.5 to 19.3 lipa per minute as of July 1, to 12.8 lipa per minute as of 1 January 2013, and to 6.3 lipa per minute as of 1 January 2015.
HT told Hina the decision would adversely impact the company's business but HT understood the decision and would honour it.
Vipnet said the decision came at the same time as new roaming regulations, adding that it would negatively impact business but that it was expected because of Croatia's EU entry.
The third European Roaming Regulation will be applied in Croatia as of July 1. EU citizens who come to Croatia and Croatians who go to the EU will pay less for mobile calls, text messages and data transfer than until now.
According to estimates by the transport ministry and HAKOM, the prices of roaming outgoing calls will drop from 6-11 to 1.82 kuna, while those of incoming calls from 2.4-6.4 to 0.53 kuna. The prices of text messages will drop from 1.6-3.2 to 0.67 kuna and those of data roaming from 50 to 3.4 kuna for one megabyte.
Explaining its decision to reduce the wholesale prices of mobile calls, HAKOM said the European Commission recommended in 2009 applying the "bottom-up" model for termination rates calculation.