Prepared by: Lotty Kakubo
Assistant Controller
Communications Authority of Zambia

On behalf of the Zambian delegation and indeed on my own behalf, Zambia wishes to add its voice to thank the Gambia Government for availing us the opportunity to participate in this important Conference.

We also wish to congratulate the CTO, ITU and Gamtel for co hosting the Conference. Having said this, I now wish to present to you a brief overview of the Internet scenario in Zambia.

Zambia has a population of about 10.1 million most of whom live in rural and sub-urban areas of Zambia.

Currently, Zambia has four licensed Internet Service Providers and is considering licensing some more soon. Out of the four, one is owned by the state (incumbent PSTN Operator) and the others are privately owned.

IP telephony is not allowed in Zambia yet but a policy on this may change in the future as this technology gets perfected. International voice telephony is the monopoly of the PSTN operator. Tele-density in Zambia, similar to other countries, is higher than average in urban areas. In four major cities, tele-density reaches 2.01 per 100 persons whereas in rural areas it is estimated at 0.09 per 100 (i.e. 9 telephone for every 10,000 people). Household penetration, on average, is approximately 5.63% while the average annual growth rate in teledensity of 3.7% has barely kept up with the population growth rate of 3%.

We are unable to categorise the number of users in the way you have requested, that is academic/research, commercial, NGO's, government. However, of the four providers, one is not yet operational but the other three combined have approximately 6500hosts representing about 20,000 users.

However, the Internet Service Providers in Zambia serves business organisations, non governmental organisations, schools, universities and government agencies etc. The majority of customers are found along the line of rail but a few in rural areas. Government is doing everything possible to stimulate interest and training of the rural population.

One of the service providers has initiated a policy to provide free internet access to government and missionary funded schools that have computer equipment and this is being done with the help of the British government.

There is an open competition policy in Zambia, that is each applicant is expected to carry out a feasibility study of the market to determine whether investment in the provision of Internet services is viable or not. The regulator does not restrict the number of providers but only makes an assessment of the ability of the applicant to raise the required funds for such a project. It is also a condition that Zambians hold at least 25% of the shares of the project if it has been initiated by foreign investors.

With regard to telecentres and cybercafes, the regulatory authority issues unrestricted licences. Licences for rural and underdeveloped areas do not attract a fee. We have quite a number of telecentres and internet cafes in the four of our major cities. The Communications Authority has undertaken a study to determine telecentre requirements in rural areas. Currently, the Communications Authority is working out modalities to fund telelcentres. One option is that part of the money realised from royalty fees is provided as seed capital to rural based community telecentres at low interest rates.

Government recognises the fact that telecentres in rural areas could promote good governance and enable the peasant farmers and the community at large have access to markets in the cities. This could also provide information on sourcing of inputs as well as assess demand of their products.

We therefore envisage an increase in the number of telecentres in the near future.