23 April 2009

1. African Economic Outlook 2008/2009 UNECA 23 April 2009 A review of the ICT sector 2008/09 David Ogong, Director, Competition and Corporate Affairs Uganda Communications Commission July 23, 2009

2. Outline • Status of ICT Infrastructure • Trends in Licensing • Service growth and penetration • Trends in retail and whole sale tariffs • Universal Access Interventions • Industry innovations

3. The Telecommunications Sector at a Glance

4. National Fiber Optic ICT Infrastructure • Roll out of Phase II of the National Fiber backbone is underway. • The 1542 km fiber shall link towns of Luweero, Kyenjojo, Bushenyi, Lira and Kumi to the Kampala metro • Phase III and IV shall link northern Uganda, Western to Phase I and II

5. Private Fiber Optic Infrastructure -UETCL • Optic Fiber network over power lines run by UETCL • UETCL has obtained a Public Infrastructure Provider and offers transmission links to service providers

6. Wireless Infrastructure and Coverage GSM coverage is close to 100% of the total population GSM Geographic coverage is at 65% 2361 BTS installed country wide 5 GSM cellular operators National Switch capacity of 12.8 million lines

7. Licensing Framework

8. Key principles of the Licensing Framework The current licensing framework is premised on the following principles; • Technology neutrality with • Convergence of services • Separation between Infrastructure and Service provision • Infrastructure is interpreted as “plant, equipment and systems associated with transmission, reception and switching of telecommunications (electronic) signals.” • A telecommunications service is taken to be the relaying of messages of any form (voice or data) over communication infrastructure between a sender and a receiver”

9. Growth in Telephone Connections • 1o million telephone connections by March 2009 from less than 2 million lines in 2005 • Telephone penetration of 32 lines for every 100 inhabitants. • Rapid growth in mobile connections is the result of falling connection charges, abolition of monthly rental charges as well as increasing coverage.

10. Public Payphones • Deliberate strategic intervention by the UCC to bolster the roll out of public pay phones. It included the establishment of pay phones through the Universal Access Fund as well as incorporating payphone obligations in NTO licenses. • Initial policy target was for a payphone for every 1,200 inhabitants. • To date there are 65,669 payphones countrywide translating into is a payphone for every 500 inhabitants

11. Broad band Services • Limited growth in demand for internet services. • Only 2.5 million internet users • The slow uptake is the result of; - high connection and bandwidth charges resulting from sole dependence on satellite bandwidth, - Limited infrastructure outside the Kampala metro - Limited local content

12. Broadband services - Contd • However there has been significant growth in mobile narrow band internet access. • This has been facilitated by the entry of traditional voice carriers in this segment offering CDMA, GPRS and 3G data services • To date there are an estimated 300,000 mobile internet connections

13. Service Tariffs • Retail tariffs are largely driven by competitive market forces. • UCC intervenes in the regulation of wholesale services like wholesale leased lines and termination. • Effective September 2009, a new interconnection framework shall come in place . • This shall prescribe interconnection principles and procedures as well as interconnection rates.

14. RCDF Universal Service Interventions

15. Thank You