THE sector deregulation which is now credited for boosting Africa s telecom density has also become sour grapes in some cases.
The situation in Ghana, Mozambique and Uganda are instructive.
Ghana used to provide the benchmark for telecoms deregulation in the continent, but now there is a twist in the tale and Ghanaians are gnashing their teeth while Telecom Malaysian is enjoying the loot it has stashed away somewhere.
Blazing a trail in 1996, Ghana Telecom (GT) sold 30 per cent of it shares to G Com, a consortium led by Malaysian Telecom. The action was taken to open up the sector, make it more vibrant and viable by adding some more lines.
The Purchase and Sale Agreement was signed between the government and G-Com in 1997. In a bizarre sense in contract documentation, G-Com which had only 30 per cent of GT was given unfettered managerial control of the national carrier, GT.
The contract which was renewable in February was cancelled instead. Hon.
Felix Owusu-Ajapong, Minister of Communications told the conference that this decision had to be taken because of the inability of Telecom Malaysia to deliver on its roll out obligation enshrined in the Technical and Consultancy Services Agreement.
For all the years that Telecom Malaysia ran GT, not a single line was added by way of expansion, the Minister informed.
It wasn t clear who managed GT because each time a fault was found in the management, Telecom Malaysia, had a smart way of passing it on to GT which was penalized .
In cancelling the contract, the regulator, the National Communications Authority has removed the exclusivity term for any operator by way of freeing the entire sector.
Now Ghana which has not particularly been fortunate with its deregulation is thinking of ways to boost the sector.
Said he Minister: "The fact that we have removed exclusivity means we can license new organisations. Don t forget we still have 70 per cent shares in GT. Remember we had WESTEL the second national operator which was supposed to provide a competition that never came."
At the moment, Ghana is trying to put life back in the sector. The Minister informed that they plan to look for a strategic partner that can manage GT for sometime while shopping to sell it to a strategic partner/investor.
Such investor will be prepared to pump some money into GT and add a minimum of 400,000 lines within a given period.
Mozambique, a country of 16 million people, appeared to have done better by sensing danger in its deregulation process which it stopped immediately.
In 1999, the country completed a new law which gave five year monopoly to the incumbent which provides both land and mobile lines. It attempted to give two more licenses and asked for entries. The Minister who spoke said that the entries were weeded down to two. But they noticed that even those too didn t have the means to provide what they were looking for.
Said the minister: "The entries did not meet our requirement. So we are restarting the tender now but only for one licence."
The story of Uganda as told by Dr. Edmund Katiti, Director Afritech Mobile who looked at The Growth of GSM in Africa: a case study of Uganda and Nigeria, is quite funny. In trying to improve their telecom fortunes, Katiti narrated, Uganda gave the second National carrier Licence to MTN, the same company providing mobile phone service in South Africa, Nigeria and in most parts of Africa.
But instead of rolling out landlines, MTN rolled out GSM services and in no time, overran the other service provider. When reminded of its obligations to Ugandans, MTN found refuge in the law which it said wasn t clear on some issues. Now those issues have been cleared. MTN which contemplated doing pay phones by way of meeting its other obligations, has started laying cables in the cities. Dr. Katiti wasn t very sure if the services will get to the rural areas.
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Nigeria which is going through a controversial deregulation and privatisation process has so much to learn from this.
First BPE has to look at happenings in other countries of Africa to ensure that whoever is paying for NITEL can run it as well as meet the roll-out obligations. It doesn t also have to be desperate in selling it.
For instance, the government is running the telecoms sector in Algeria, which is acclaimed to be one of the best in Africa. The sector runs effective services and is also expanding fast to increase the teledensity for the country.
Secondly, the NCC which has advertised for the Second National Operator and other service providers must ensure that whoever is getting a licence has the capacity to rollout services according to the contract document. It is better not to start all than to have a WESTEL in Nigeria.
