Legislation: Where art thou?

Broadband services have taken the world by storm with mobile applications and mobile connectivity being top of the list.

In light of this, legislation, policies, regulations and the licensing framework have been instrumental in ensuring that the technologies, especially mobile telephony, broadband wireless and the projects associated with undersea cables, which aid in affordably connecting Africa to the world, are established.

However, the rate of growth and expansion is being hampered by the legislation and licensing available. Recently Econet clashed with POTRAZ due to lack of licensing that is applicable to the use of Blackberry services in the country. Of course there are security concerns around the issue that cannot be ignored – but the issue at hand is how long will this take for there to be proper legislation?

Is there no proper protocol for Zimbabwean operators, Incumbents and Internet Service Providers to follow rather than have services cut-off and deemed illegal?

With the connection of Zimbabwe to the undersea cables comes a plethora of applications and services at our disposal. As the issue is no longer one of connectivity, the focus must move to regulation.

There is so much happening around us – including the current legislation on Local Loop Unbundling, which has been proposed in South Africa and is already being implemented in other African countries. The current concern in South Africa right now is that the longer the regulator takes to get the framework approved and in motion, the less the value of real benefit to the public.

Imagine if we had our legislation up to par, how we could effectively define our spectrum and thus utilise different technologies like Long Term Evolution. It is high time our regulator learnt to take a proactive not reactive approach.

Not only is it nearly impossible to get the type of licensing currently available in Zimbabwe from the PORTRAZ website, but there is no proper feedback to the public of current framework proposals that are on the table and require public and players' responses.

This hinders the process of quickly getting the proper legislation required for us as a country to be able to take part in the ICT growth services that are hitting the region. It also chases away investors who might be interested in the current legislative market to see if investment is possible?

It is vital that POTRAZ makes information accessible to everyone on its public portal so that there can be a constructive discussion on how best to propel our country technologically forward.

Post published in: Tech

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