5 January 2009
Kampala — Telephone subscribers rose to over seven million from 2.2 million in the last two and half years, the information and communication technology minister, Dr. Ham Mulira, has said, writes David Muwanga.
"We have five major service providers with public infrastructure provision (PIP) licences. There are 20 internet service providers, who are using PIP licences. These contributed to the growth in subscriber base to seven million in the last quarter of 2008," he said, adding that the Government had started constructing the national data transmission backbone that would link up all districts to supplement the existing infrastructure and capacity.
"We have already covered Kampala, Jinja, Entebbe and Bombo, which are now able to access high-speed internet," Mulira said. He said the project includes provision of e-government infrastructure with an objective of making the Government efficient, transparent and more user-friendly.
"However there is need to provide and ensure the supply of up to date hardware and soft water tools,". "There is need to provide technical skills at the academic and tertiary levels since all the technology service provision would be of no use if the ultimate consumer of the technology is green of the benefits and usage,".
"There is also need for ensuring end-user skills provision but only after having created the necessary awareness of the relevance of the technologies to one,' he advised.
He said that more applications and daily chores are transferring to the on-line environment owing to the continued dependency on technology in our day to day lives.
"There is therefore a requirement of providing a legal and regulatory framework to ensure protection of the consumers and users of the facilities.
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