Zambia’s telecommunications regulator, Zambia Information and Communications Technology Authority (Zicta), has laid criminal charges against all three of the country’s mobile network operators for “failure to meet minimum standards of quality of service”.
The operators are MTN, Airtel and the Zambia Telecommunications Company.
In a statement, the regulatory authority says it resolved to take “remedial measure relating to the enforcement of quality of service in order to protect public interest”.
It says that deteriorating quality of service levels has made communication in Zambia difficult, led to a public outcry, and had a negative effect on doing business.
“Under the published quality of service guidelines, Zicta has an option to invoke either administrative or criminal sanctions arising from the failure to adhere to the set parameters relating to quality of service,” the authority says in the statement.
A decision was taken late in June to prosecute all three mobile service providers for offering poor quality of service to the public, it says.
It instituted criminal proceedings on 4 July on two counts of failure to meet minimum standards of quality of service and one count of failure to comply with a provision in the quality of service guidelines.
Zim state broadcaster hails Sentech move
Zimbabwe’s state-owned ZBC-TV has welcomed the move by Sentech to scramble the signals of SABC channels on free-to-air decoders, the state-owned Herald newspaper reported.
“It is illegal for any country to have an overflow of signals, and SABC has been doing that in our territory,” ZBC-TV group CEO Happison Muchechetere was quoted as saying. “At no point should overspill be allowed.”
Residents in Zimbabwe and other Southern African countries had taken advantage of the fact that it was easy to pirate SABC signals using cheap, Chinese-made decoders as a result of the fact that the encryption system used by Sentech had been compromised. Source: The Herald
Vic Falls first to 4G in Zim
Zimbabwe’s largest mobile operator, Econet, has unveiled plans to launch next-generation 4G broadband services around the tourist town of Victoria Falls.
The news comes ahead of the planned general assembly in the town of the UN World Tourism Organisation.
It will be the first site in Zimbabwe to get commercial 4G mobile broadband. Source: Techzim