The national telephony operator Moldtelecom has proposed reducing the rates for landline-to-mobile calls by nearly 30%. This can happen if the GSM operators support the initiative to reduce interconnection costs, the company said in a press release, quoted by Info-Prim Neo. According to the press release, interconnection, its costs and the payments made between the operators represent the area which arises most of the controversy in the field. Until 2004, there was a single rate for the interconnection of mobile and landline networks set at 3.19 cents per minute. Later, on the request of a mobile operator the Regulatory Agency for Communications raised the rate to 7 cents. Meanwhile, the telecommunications market has evolved, in particular the number of mobile users rose from 470,000 in 2004 to 2.8 million in 2010, so the costs of servicing one call diminished. Therefore the subscribers are justified to expect rate cuts, Moldtelecom argued. This week, Moldtelecom submitted a proposal to the Regulatory Agency requesting the reduction of the rate from 7 to 4 cents per minute (a drop of 43%) starting from 1 September 2010. This rate should be applied both to calls from Moldtelecom's landline network to the mobile networks of Orange, Moldcell and Unite (CDMA and 3G) and to calls between all the mobile networks. Furthermore, Moldtelecom is willing to proportionally reduce the rates for calls from other operators to its landline network from 3.19 cents to 1.8 cents per minute. The Regulatory Agency also considers the current rates are too high. In a letter addressed to the telephony operators in mid August, the Agency said the high rates for the voice calls affected the competition climate and the final charge paid by the final user. In the proposal receives endorsement, Moltelecom will have a single final rate of [1.50 lei/minute] (VAT excluded) for landline calls to all mobile operators.