David Malingha Doya, the Eastafrican
7 August 2007
Nairobi — The controversial interconnection agreement between Uganda Telecom and Southern Sudan's Gemtel phone company took a new twist last week when it emerged that the two have quietly installed a satellite dish for the latter at one of Uganda's most sensitive communications facilities.
The news came a few days after a committee of Uganda's parliament asked Interpol to investigate the Southern Sudan company, which has an irregular interconnection agreement with UTL under which its subscribers use Uganda's international gateway prefix, 256, as this newspaper revealed last month.
The EastAfrican has now learnt that Gemtel could have illegally set up a satellite dish at the Mpoma international gateway and satellite earth station, a sensitive government-owned facility in Mukono district, 21 kilometres from Kampala city. Mpoma, which was set up during Idi Amin's regime, is the nerve centre of Uganda's satellite connections with the rest of the world.
The six-metre satellite dish at Mpoma, which engineers have recently upgraded to handle larger volumes, is dedicated to handling all Internet and voice traffic from any part of the world to Southern Sudan, and vice versa.
Now the Uganda Communications Commission, which regulates the telecoms sector in the country, says that the installation could be illegal.
Fred Otunnu, a UCC spokesperson said: "To set up a satellite dish, the procedure requires a company to register locally, obtain a public service provider license and authorisation to use a V-Sat (very small aperture terminal)."
However, Gemtel has not done any of this, and Kampala officials involved in the transaction insist that the company is purely from Southern Sudan with no footprint in Uganda.
In its edition of July 9 - 15, The EastAfrican reported on a billing conflict between UTL and MTN Uganda, which insisted on paying local rates for calls to the Gemtel network while the former insisted on charging it international rates.
At the heart of the dispute is how to place Gemtel, which uses Uganda's prefix through its agreement with UTL, but which is situated in another country.
Last week, a committee in Uganda's parliament asked Interpol to investigate Gemtel after Works and Transport Minister John Nasasira appeared before it and revealed that the Ugandan government does not have any information about the company's directors.
Mr Nasasira, who gave the green light to the deal when the Communications Ministry was still under his docket, and Patrick Masambu, the executive director of UCC, both told a parliamentary committee investigating the matter that they did not know the directors of Gemtel.
Mr Nasasira said the primary objective of the deal was to facilitate exploration of business opportunities in Sudan. The Southern Sudan government, which took over a part of the country with hardly any infrastructure, asked the Ugandan government to provide it with an international gateway due to logistical and other problems of sharing Sudan's 249 code with the Khartoum government.
Authorities in Kampala have said that the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), a United Nations body that leads regulation in the industry globally, allows a sovereign state to lend another its international code under certain circumstances such as disasters, but only temporarily.
Indeed, the government of Southern Sudan is currently in talks with ITU and the Khartoum government over an independent or shared international dialling code, although some communications experts say the setting up of a satellite dish suggests a long-term arrangement with the other party.
The UTL-Gemtel arrangement is a key test of how companies and countries in the region do business with counterparts from Southern Sudan - which, while enjoying autonomy, remains part of Sudan.
UTL company secretary Donald Nyakairu confirmed to The EastAfrican that the new satellite dish at Mpoma satellite earth station belongs to Gemtel.
"Gemtel is only co-locating its equipment needed for interconnecting with us, which is okay," he said.
He added: "We were informed by the government that it was okay to give them our line. We have an interconnection agreement with them that will change as soon as the company gets its own international code."
Parliament is investigating the financial arrangements between the two firms and whether Uganda has lost any money, either through unpaid taxes, or through UTL, in which it still owns a minority shareholding.
Financial details of the agreement have been scanty; initial reports indicated that Gemtel, whose chairman is listed as Augustus Caesar Mulenga, a Ugandan, was paying UTL $50,000 a month in interconnection fees. This figure appears to have risen, with The EastAfrican learning last week that Gemtel paid UTL $75,000 in April and $102,000 in June this year in interconnection settlements.
Legislators are also investigating the manner in which UTL got the deal and want to know why there was no open bidding for offering the service, which required the government to extend rights to another country.
However, UTL's Mr Nyakairu told The EastAfrican: "There was no requirement for bidding; Gemtel spoke to other operators in the country like MTN, but UTL offered very competitive rates and we got the deal."
Meanwhile, Gemtel's website reveals that it was licensed for 20 years to build and operate a telecommunications network in the 10 states of Southern Sudan. It is currently on an expansion drive to connect 200,000 subscribers and build base station towers in all the 10 states by the end of this year.
The company, which is reported to have more than 12,000 subscribers, has already put up base stations in Juba, Bor, Torit, Yabio and Wau. Construction of base stations is also going on in Rumbek, Aweil, Kwajok, Malakal and Bentiu. It is building a microwave link from Koboko in Uganda through Kenya to connect Yei and Juba in Southern Sudan.
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