Concord Times (Freetown)
Tanu Jalloh
13 January 2009
analysis
A contemporary informal history of the Canadian state of Ontario after the advent of the French invasion of 1700 almost presents a similar situation of postwar Sierra Leone.
Like in Ontario, following World Wars I and II, Sierra Leone after the brutal decade long war, has proven that the realties glimpsed in the cauldron of war mostly give birth to a new spirit of brotherhood and vigilance, especially in the pursuit of peace and development, economic reforms including the management of a liberalized economy.
That comparison aside, in history as in life maturity and wisdom are most times attained through painful trials and tragic errors. Apparently no other period in Sierra Leone's history offers such a striking illustration of a hidden truth as in the 21st Century. Against that backdrop, postwar economic development in Sierra Leone and economic recovery in general would see the advent of mobile telephony as important as ever.
It all started unnoticed with a fewer privileged people accessing the Internet. Majority of Sierra Leoneans never knew at the time, or could hardly perceive rather, that the ages of global Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) were fast sweeping across the continent.
Before this period, it was only the government owned telecom operator, Sierratel that operated fixed telephone lines. It also provided Internet services but the traffic was as incredibly slow as it was expensive. Sierratel monopolized the telecommunications industry until in early 2000 when mobile phone operators like Celtel (now Zain) mobile phone company and later Millicom (now tiGo) SL Ltd gained entrance into the country's small market economy. However, that was not because government regulations governing the industry favoured Sierratel's monopoly, but it was then virtually the only telecom operator in the country.
Today, we are far away from limiting to or associating telecom with Sierratel in the country. The presence of liberalization, interconnection and collocation, which point to a significant direction of regulated competition, has replaced that perception. Thus we now see a steady increase and growing presence of additional mobile telephony providers (GSM, CDMA, VoIP, Fixed Wireless and Mainlines) like Comium, Africel and there was Datatel.
Internet services provided in the Sierratel days met serious problems. They therefore could not influence the perceptions of people who apparently would wish to benefit from ICTs. Much as Web hosting in most parts of Africa is still very expensive, partly because of the different constraints that Internet Service Providers (ISPs) face - fewer customers, costs of the bandwidth - local infrastructure virtually never existed. In contemporary Sierra Leone market economy, ISPs like Datatel, Fidelity Global Companies, Afrinet, IPTEL, and Limeline were yet to affect effective Internet communication throughout the country. This was going to be made worse simply because services provided by ISPs were limited.
Fixed lines still concentrate in Freetown, the capital city, leaving the vast majority in the provincial towns and villages not even connected to landlines telephone system let alone have Internet access. Such growth is also constrained by the extent of electricity grid, the availability of computer equipment and low level of literacy.
Against such background, it became a surety that factors mentioned above would no doubt favour the advent of GSM. Today, Zain, which stands as the pioneering mobile operator, operates in almost all the major towns and surrounding villages. It could now boast of a subscriber base estimated between 250,000 and 300,000. Comium provides services to approximately 200,000 while Millicom, Africel cater for a good number of clientele as well.
Consequently, mobile subscribers have surpassed fixed lines users and mobile coverage generally spread beyond the reach of fixed lines infrastructure. The latter could now be found in the remotest village courtesy of Celtel. Although Information Technology development is now largely a matter of private sector investment and would not imply a public sector resource drain, it is increasingly central to economic growth, which is a prerequisite to addressing the health, environment, government and a myriad other national challenges.
That notwithstanding, in November of 2002, Group Chief Executive Officer of AITEC, Dr. Anil Sahai told a gathering at the AITEC Europe forum in London that resources, knowledge, technology, market and economy are the internal ingredients of the IT induced economies, with innovation playing the key role for new product development.
He added: "competition plays an important role in enhancing the quality of products and services as well as pushing for innovation. This competition can be from internal players or the external (international) players. However, the empowerment can make or break the whole system."
But regulationwise some communication experts, prominent among them, Maxwell Massaqoui, an expert in the areas of telecom regulation and telecom Business Support System/Operation Support System (BSS/OSS) recently accosted this reporter to suggest ways through which the break, as pointed out by Dr. Sahai, of the whole system could be forestalled. His arguments are premised on the fact that Sierra Leone still grapples with the ignominy of a fledgling economy; therefore competition should not consume regulation.
His views, to a greater extent, match a June 2002 ICT Development and Initiative Dossier, which looked at ICT in the ACP Caribbean and Pacific regions. It says: "since the beginning of the 1980s almost all national telecom and information technology markets worldwide have been transformed by technological innovation, product diversification (especially the introduction of mobile/cellular telephony and internet) and market restructuring (particularly privatization, liberalization and the introduction of independent regulator."
Meanwhile, the situation is different in Sierra Leone where the issue of an independent regulator was a major concern. By default, and before the advent of the National Telecommunication Commission (NATCOM), the business of competition management and regulation was left with the then Ministry of Transport and Communications. Prior to it being disengaged from its line ministry as part of the former government's privatization programme, Sierratel under the ministry had also served as the "master regulator" for the industry. But Maxwell, like many other experts who share his views, was not comfortable with the then government's regulation of the telecom industry.
"In the absence of an independent regulator and with the Public Telecom Operator (PTO) lined with the National Commission for Privatization (NCP), the Ministry was tasked with wide ranging issues relating to the management of sector competition and regulation," Maxwell explained.
Now the National Telecommunications Commission, established by a 2004 Telecom Act, has the statutory duty to issue operator licenses, allocate spectrums or other scarce resources, arbitrates disputes, formulates sector policy, and administers fines and industry standardization and consumer protection measures.
According to Maxwell, "the ministry, before NATCOM, failed to present a meaningful platform to articulate the national government's position and policy on telecommunications."
Like other experts, Maxwell could not dispute the fact that post-conflict Sierra Leone now sees or realizes the full benefits of competition especially in the telecom industry but that we must go beyond the perceived approach of "liberalization without regulation" or "liberalization with phased in regulation," especially when the need for well guided policy and regulatory framework was more acute.
He suggested that in order to comprehensively benefit from the government's liberalization policy and sector reforms, NATCOM should take some urgent measures in managing the regulatory affairs of the sector lest the current state of the telecom sector will put the consumer at the disposal of the service provider.
It could be recalled that on January 17, 2006, all mobile phones operators - Celtel, Millicom, Africel, Datatel, and Comium - put out a joint public notice announcing a 10% Sale Tax to the cost of all local tariffs. In the aftermath, subscribers booed at the decision and attributed such extemporary imposition of 10% tax to the lack of government's consumer protection. But the decision of the mobile operators was a result of the introduction of the Finance Act 2006, dated 22 December 2005, being a supplement to the Sierra Leone Gazette Vol. CXXXVI, No.67.
So far, the telecom industry has been one of the country's post-conflict economic success stories.
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