[UAH] Landline Telephone for every House hold

wsis2005] How to save old telephone network (forward)

[wsis2005] How to save old telephone network (forward)

Submitted by Isaac Kalembe on Mon, 03/19/2007 - 15:16

• wiu-forum

Dear Partner,

I'd like to bring your attention to the document below.

Thank you.

Isaac Kalembe

Assistant Corporate Affairs Officer (ACAO)

Uganda Communications Commission

12th Floor Communications House

Plot 1 Colville Street, P.O. Box 7376

Kampala, Uganda

Ph: +256-31/41-339000

----- Forwarded by Isaac Kalembe/Ucc on 03/19/2007 11:13 AM -----

Irene Kaggwa/Ucc

03/19/2007 10:46 AM
To: All UCC Staff
cc
Subject Fw: How to save old telephone network (forward)

----- Forwarded by Irene Kaggwa/Ucc on 03/19/2007 10:51 AM -----
Daniel Bwanika

03/19/2007 10:42 AM
To: popsec [at] imul [dot] com
cc
Subject: How to save old telephone network (forward) E- governance (?) & National Telecoms

// Forward this article to as many organisations, institutions as possible. // It is seeking to modify the telephone act/communications act by making it a // law for every permanent structure have a landline telephone as a public // service utility.

-------------------

In  Cap. 107 sec. 34 of Uganda Posts and Telecommunications Corporation, telephone services are defined under the laws of Uganda. I wish to propose to URA, UBOS, UNBS, NEMA, UFA, UCC, MICT, MOWT, MOES, and meteorological department that in section 34 a clause be added:

 

(c) Telephony is a public service utility and the corporation/UTL will provide a landline to each and every permanently constructed public or private structure and household whether commercial, residential-

 

I.                   for the purpose of providing social services provisions

II.                 

III.             No tenant or landlord under this clause will prohibit the above
service to be provided whether the structure or premise is a under
the condominium, land act or other laws.

IV.              That the above provision will be provided in less than seven working days.

 

Additionally there will be need to change in the communications act to include the above clause where telephony becomes a mandatory service provision rather than a voluntary provision for schools, healthcare centres, private and commercial buildings, public administrative offices.

 

URA, MOH, MOES should impose this law on all commercial buildings and
healthcare centres for purpose of their activities. Communication is a basic necessity as hygiene, security etc. I can provide technical details on the integration of communication media and its dissemination on copper wire.

 

There should be a shift in service delivery i.e. in ura, ministry of education, health, labour and works that as per the clause above. Some activities must be conducted over copper wire. There are no taxes on computers therefore all businesses enterprises, must have a
landline or be connected to telephone network as well as all public
and private schools, health-care centres, administrative offices etc.

 

In that sense, all public and private buildings by law must have a
landline or network connection. The same will apply to private buildings whether commercial or households. For easement purpose the law should be designed in such a manner that road construction whether major or minor should include landline telephone network design in their road reserve. The condominium law today encumbers the above and easement roads (right of way) as per road design are very lacking. The condominium law is another very poorly designed law, which should be replaced with a tenancy-landlord law for it creates problem for telecom, power and water and sewerage service providers.

 

With the above clause, there will be no need for SPENDING HUGE
AMOUNTS OF MONEY FOR RURAL COMMUNICATION for it implies where there is a building, UTL must take a landline there, therefore a radio network and Internet can also be availed.

 

What was NRM intention of privatisation of Uganda Post and Telecommunications to make it efficient, make it more profitable or to serve as a public service? What is the role of National Telecommunication facilities? How many landline telephone has private operators created in the country since privatisation?

 

If every permanent house, structure or building, has water and electricity, why is it that it has no landline telephone network - why is it that it's not a law to have such utilities and amenities?

 

It was reported in the new vision that INTERNAL SECURITY ORGANISATION
will spearhead the head counting of USE participants typifying the total failure of Internet Communication Technology, mobile network system and government failure to have a National Identification System. Had this government asked how the Swedish system works, a
simple foolproof system would already be in place today.

 

The British Development Agency (DFID) funded linking up all URA's communication network something neither Makerere institute of computing, Uganda Computers or the works ministry a governmental entity can't do!

A certain organisation, form America is also in Uganda to help government link up all her institutions, whatever that mean! Linking up Ministries, governmental institutions, prisons, school, or hospitals one might ask?!! Laughable isn't?

 

I wrote this article in 1997, published on the Canadian forum for mobile & Internet Communication, before the privatisation of the national telecommunication facility, the Uganda posts and telecommunication. It was adapted by a certain Professor in Nigeria and published in New African magazine. I can today attest that very few government institutions, outside Kampala have landline telephones. In fact they must have declined in real numbers dramatically.

 

Besides, private phone companies are finding it very difficult and expensive to connect rural areas and the UPTC infrastructure is rapidly falling apart. 10 years since I wrote this article, with certainty I can therefore prove rural communication and electrification will fail big time unless cooper wire infrastructure
is regenerated. How are the existing telecoms in Uganda for example facilitate and provide for Uganda's need for socially viable data; -

 

1. Population gathering and census
2. School enrolment and output (ISO head count of USE participants
3. Regional market and labour activities data
4. Agricultural and food production out
5. Fertility and Mortality rates from regional healthcare centres
6. Climatology and hydrological data
7. Flora and fauna /taxonomy data
8. Disease maps and drug distribution /information data
9. Tax revenue (region/provincial) collection and report
10. Industrial production data
11. Household data (family socio-economic data)
12. Traffic and motor vehicle data
13. Chemical or environmental data
14. Land and survey data
15. Pre-urban housing data
16. In and out patient for drug and health care facilitation
17. Licensing data
18. Business enterprises data.
19. Property ownership data
20. Bank accounts data etc

 

All the above data in developed countries whether on regional, provincial and district level is data gathered using telecom facilities via landline networks. Hence creating a functionally advanced and aware society, triggering operational structures for information technology and national telecom adaptability. This is what I called a socially superior structure and liberating social practice and science.

 

What are the proponents for e-governance mean? That you hold your mobile phone and start download geodetic data, a get streaming population data flow?!

 

Where the infrastructure has been built by idi amin, is now all in shambles thanks to privatisation.

 

Ask how many people in this ict era have access to the post bank services which original intention was to serve as a public service? Now we have micro finance, saving credit and what not all independent of the most basic infrastructure!

 

Uganda has no regional, district or provincial data gathering centres, which will be connected, to the national archiving centres or statistic bureaux. But then how that data could be transmitted from one region to another without the fixed communication network?

 

There is no African Country today, which does not have a university/ ies, tertiary or vocational institutions and primary or secondary schools. These should be connected into a network. There are hospitals and dispensaries, police posts, administrative entities, courts of law, tax collecting agencies, insurance companies, and so on. On top of that, there is an extensive healthcare network system, public administration networks and trade on regional, district or provincial levels, national to national level though not thoroughly functional and operational in the most efficient and socially productive manner.

 

Consumption of telecommunication goods and services has rapidly gone up into the past recent three years. Africa can't remain indifferent and continue in a state of permanent consumption in a seemingly rapidly growing industry for schools, healthcare, public administration and weather monitoring facilities etc.

 

Firstly, if Africa does not tackle these problems with systematic and methodical exertion the continent is going to remain consumers of imported equipment, which can be manufactured here anyway. Hence slowing down and at worst destroying the economic growth in the entire engineering education fields, small-scale electronics and electrical installation industry.

 

Africa's highly skilled engineers are underemployed and/or languishing in foreign nations discriminated and exploited, a situation, which can't be allowed to continue indefinitely putting pressure on the entire economy.

 

The security of any country depends on the nature and structures of communication facilitation in place that must be unique to that country.

 

The problem with African telecoms is lack of effective management in order to attain productivity and efficiency but not fragmentation and competition. If nation states want competition in the sector, then National telecommunication companies should be functionally decentralised to regional, district or provincial level with very clear objective and expert management for long-term increases in region productivity and efficiency with the centre.

 

How can a specialised doctor located at a national hospital get to know what is happening in a remote healthcare centre- it is quicker through a telephone network. Today not many African nations have operational and working landline telephone networks. Consequently a doctor can't save a life. Likewise, specialist in education, planning can offer specialised courses and advice through landline or fixed telephone network connected or interconnected to digital television networks to remote regions at the least economic cost.

 

The problems, which Africa faces, are not economic, as economic prophets' claims but they are rather fundamentally organisational, socially. There is total lack of communications infrastructures, which will link up all rural areas, mediating multiethnic societies and cultures, networking for a common social action and hence generating harmonious economic and business activities metamorphosing into national socio-economic structures and policies.

 

Claims that mobile phones and the privatisation of the telecommunication sector, will lead to harmonising the short falls in socio-economic organisation, does not hold, will be proved and will fail since the nation state organising structure have got no control over private telecom activities. Private sectors are there to make and optimise profits but not build social and national communications networks and infrastructures therefore private networks are confined
geographically and operationally.

 

All the above-mentioned entities must have quicker and efficient data flow. Consequently, communication needs whereby services and goods are transacted remotely is an absolute necessity, which can't be done using mobile phones however advanced they might be. It doesn't make economic sense where for example schools, hospitals, police units, transporters, public offices, licensing and taxing authorities must exchange data on a daily or hourly basis. Without a communications infrastructure, there is no development, or growth therefore is liable to stall quicker development. Problems then become remote and distanced from the recipient and senders.

 

Africa's economic problems are rather communicational, e.g. time, distance and organisational problems rather than being purely economical.

 

These are the structures- social structures, which can generate and support National Telecoms economically in Africa, hence creating the economy, which befits and can sustain a modern telecom infrastructure. Advanced nations have reached the optimal, efficiency and productivity levels within these sectors, a reason why they are looking for high-consumer technologies to capture markets but not distance and time outside their boundaries.

 

All over Europe there are landlines telephones. Mobile phones are luxuries.

 

Africa today has created stock exchange facilities where the majority Africans can't in a fraction of a second exactly know what is happening on the other side of the village. Rural regions need to be wired with communication facilities, which are within the economic possibilities of rural dwellers. It makes telecommunication facilitation and provisions a need rather than a luxury.

 

I can argue that as several nation state societies are struggling to form nations. The social structures i.e. basic utilities are still rudimentary structurally and required in stimulating internal growth. Present Africa social structures are only generating traditional localised views- hindering liberation of local knowledge, the boundaries and confinement of space.

 

In a sense, I can argue that Africa has no society-to-society, group-to-group, and administrative to administrative communication and organisation to organisational communication structures on a national level. Where there is lack of such infrastructure, communication is blocked or slow hence the problems socially becomes even more complex, generating three other major problems Africans are struggling with which are as follows; -

 

1.            Lack of efficient management of multiethnic society or cultural business /economies

2.            Timing

3.            Monitoring and Control of both the private and public socio-economic actions.

 

These are the main social problems, which manifests or simply interpreted as economic problems. They are simply social organisational problems, which must be solved first through systematic structural social organisation through communication infrastructures. They can't be solved through privatisation since privatisation is hinged on individual desire to maximise individual appetite but not national or society goals.

 

African economies are basically founded on three principal demands namely: food, shelter and healthcare that are factor components of the primary economic infrastructure on which the telecom industry in African should be founded.

 

* Food is the agricultural sector and the predominant activity on the African continent. Microwave climatic and product markets monitoring and dissemination of information, for agricultural production does generate it is own economy, which can sustain its own telecom networking industry. Since agriculture is a necessity, it does also cause quick adaptability to the information technological structures.

 

* Shelter does compose housing, general construction sector and hygienic sectors (health care), which in social terms calls for national organisational structures hence an extensive telecommunication infrastructures and economy. The telecom industry in African can play a huge role in harmonising healthy care, schools, and pre-urban structural organisation and communication from the centre to the periphery through the decentralisation of telecommunications infrastructure.

 

* Health care in African could be so cheap if the National telecoms
where a bit more involved in determining the geographical distribution of disease like mapping and systems design, something which can be done through collecting data. Partly using modern cartographic methods like geographical information systems for data distribution, geographical positioning systems to map out drug distribution, resource allocation (man power and capital input), and disease distribution. The telecommunication industry is a harbinger in this regard with high economic returns. How much does it cost to make a geographical information map? You need data, which can quickly be transferred through telecommunication infrastructures.

 

The last point if can be attained on regional levels then can generate a self-sustaining financing national medical /agricultural /school research network, administrative network etc. All, which for efficient management and productive running can only be done through grounding national telecoms network to purse such socially productive sectors in that particular location or regions on the African continent.

 

Compensatory networks, which are short term and self-financing, are the taxing system networks. Every region centre and trading nodes must be connected into a network loop. Such a network calls for low-level law enforcement network, like traffic monitoring, customs, and boarder to board crossing trade-monitoring networks.

 

Then comes the media network, public utilities like water and sewerage utilities, electricity distribution and pricing, postal activities, banking and insurance networks etc. Such entities are self-sustaining which must be linked to telecommunication and social system networks provided for by National telecoms to generate national revenues for further social -technological development. The problems with all the above-mentioned entities are not profit optimisation and maximisation but rather management and developmental strategies, which are lacking on the African continent to cause profit maximisation.

 

Ugandans must question what is meant with non-performing African telecommunication facilities or what privatisation is really going to provide and achieve African societies, without the political weal, social structures, within which they function and the state of affairs as illustrated above.

 

Bwanika Nakyesawa Luwero

 

ICT data

The new vision Thursday December 28, 2006

Mobile phone customers - 1,937,109

Fixed phone customers - 107, 992

Tele density per 100 people 4.2% 2004 to 6.5% 2006
Turn over $ 810m 2004 to date

Work coverage in 745 (80%)of the 926 sub-counties

Radios 176 private 122 operational

TV 25 private 14 operational

290,000 vacancies mc network in 628 of 926 sub counties.

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_______________
Daniel Bwanika

www.idrc-ug.com

http://www.siup.ac.ug/wordpress/