Prepared by: Irene Kaggwa
irenekargs@yahoo.com

The Internet industry in Uganda has experienced a rapid growth over the last two years in terms of number of service providers. Today, Uganda has eleven licensed Internet access service providers, or more commonly known, Internet service providers. This increase in number of operators has created an environment with full competition in the provision of Internet services in Uganda. However, the increase in number of operators has not resulted in any significant decline in charges to tariffs that reflect the cost of service. This and the still high costs of computers have acted as a major hindrance to the growth of Internet in the country. Expansion of infrastructure is also still limited with most concentration placed in the capital, Kampala, where the operators are guaranteed a steady market due to tourists, entrepreneurs and other interested parties. While the Uganda Communications Commission, at present, does not place any restriction on the number of ISPs operating in Uganda, it has also not attached any expansion obligations to the ISP licences. It has been left to the operators to determine their area of coverage over Uganda and the expansion pace. The Commission however, plans to carry out a study towards the end of this calendar year to consider the actual cost of providing service in Uganda and thus establish price baskets for each service including Internet.

The number of service providers is not the only area that has experienced growth over the past years. The following table reflects the increase in number of users in the past four years among the large operators.

Table 1
Growth in Customer Base

There is a focus, by the ICT policy team, on the local content in order to make Internet use immediately relevant to most of the population.

The number of Internet cafes has also grown to eight licensed operators, providing more access points for Ugandans to Internet communication. The tariffs of these allow smaller users and low-income users to be able to reap the benefits of the Internet. This has led to an increase in awareness of the Internet, its use and its benefits among the people of Uganda especially those in the city. A few of telecentres have also come up over the country especially in rural areas, starting with basic services like telephone and fax then growing on to provide other services like internet.

Although VoIP, which involves the real time transmission and reception of voice in a digitized form, is becoming very trendy in the Communications sector due to its cheap and convenient nature, it happens to fall in the category of limited competition services in Uganda. This calls for an exclusivity of five years over the provision of such service. The ISPs and cafes are thus not licensed, and are even prohibited from offering this service. It is common knowledge however, that such a service is very difficult to regulate let alone prohibit. The Uganda Communications Commission is in itself not against Voice over Internet as a service or technology. In fact, UCC encourages the two national operators who have the voice exclusivity, to introduce this service so that Ugandans can enjoy its benefits.