Telecoms want tighter regulations on industry (Uganda)

Telecoms want tighter regulations on industry (Uganda)

Telecom service providers have called for tightening of regulations to limit the entrance of new players in the market so as to promote quality.

Speaking at the 10th Anniversary of the Capacity Africa summit at Speke Resort Munyonyo on Tuesday, Mr Roger Sekaziga, the chief executive officer of Roke Telecom, said tightening the regulation will improve the competition in the industry and lower the costs of data for the Ugandan market.

Experts say the Ugandan market is crowded and landlocked with many service providers feeding a small market size and spectrum.

Spectrum refers to the radio frequencies allocated to the mobile industry and other sectors for communication over the airwaves.

Mr Godfrey Mutabazi, the executive director of the Uganda Communications Commission, told telecom service providers that the body would take away spectrum from those providers who do not utilise it well.

“There is need to maintain efficient allocation of spectrum to meet the growing demand to support connectivity and delivery of new and innovative services,” Mr Mutabazi said.

Speaking at the same function, Mr Frank Tumwebaze, the minister of ICT, urged the telecom service providers to share infrastructure among themselves in order to promote quality service and outreach.

“What is the relevance of government investing in a national fibre cable backbone when the telecoms are doing the same, how then are we going to lower the costs of data if we are all constructing our fibre cables. We need to work together to improve quality and lower costs of data for everybody,” Mr Tumwebaze said.

He said the agenda for capacity Africa 2016 is rich in context and serves to help regulate the markets.

According to Mr Mutabazi, the broad band report 2016 predicts that the mobile market will continue to grow but at a slower pace.

The GSMA intelligence forecasts that by 2020, there will be 5.6 billion unique mobile money subsribers globally more than the number of people with electricity in their homes, bank accounts or running water.

The growth is largely driven by increased infrastructure deployments through innovative ways.