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| Photo credit: © Blend Images/Alamy |
Overview
Uganda is a land-locked country located in
East Africa, about 800 kilometres inland from the
Indian Ocean. It is bordered by the Democratic
Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Rwanda, Sudan and
Tanzania, and lies along the Equator. It has an area of
241 038 square kilometers and a population of about
33 million inhabitants.*.
Uganda Communications Commission (UCC) is
the country’s regulator of the communications sector.
UCC was established in 1998 by the Uganda
Communications Act (Cap 106 Laws of Uganda) to
facilitate and enable the development of a modern
communications sector and infrastructure in the
country.
Today, Uganda’s communications sector is one
of the fastest growing in Africa. As in the rest of
the continent, this is largely due to the rapid expansion
of mobile telephony. According to statistics
from UCC, the number of telephone subscribers had
reached 10 million in March 2009 — up from more
than 8.7 million in December 2008 — which is about
one-third of the country’s population. Of the 10 million
subscriptions, 9.8 million are mobile phone subscribers
while around 200 000 are fixed-line owners
(see Figure 1).
Despite the bleak global economic outlook,
1.35 million telephone connections were added to
the Ugandan market between December 2008 and
March 2009, making these three months the highest
quarter-to-quarter growth in subscriptions in the
country to date. This growth translates into a nationwide
teledensity of 32.8 lines per 100 inhabitants, compared to the 29.5 teledensity of December 2008.
The Commission figures show a remarkable improvement
in the telecommunications sector, both in capacity
and distribution. The population coverage for
mobile telephony is close to 100 per cent, while geographical
coverage is about 65 per cent.
Mobile market players
Since 2007, Uganda has opened up the sector
fully to competition. Currently, Uganda’s major mobile
telephony providers are MTN Uganda, Orange
Uganda Limited, Zain (formerly Celtel) Uganda
Telecom Mobile and Warid Telecom. The boom in
Uganda’s mobile market is the result of continuous
positive growth of the country’s gross domestic
product (GDP) and a clear policy of liberalization and
competition.
There are two main categories of licences in the
telecommunications sector under a licensing regime
introduced in 2006. One is the public infrastructure provider (PIP) licence, which allows operators to set
up their infrastructure in any part of the country. The
other is the public service provider (PSP) licence, which
allows telecommunication services to be provided using
infrastructure deployed by PIP companies.
Under this licensing regime, the Commission
has licensed 24 public infrastructure provider companies
and 35 public service providers. In addition,
the Commission has encouraged the sharing of infrastructure
and introduced a simplified licensing
procedure, both serving to boost the entry of new
companies into the market.
Broadband and the Internet
A third-generation (3G) mobile broadband service
was launched in major cities in March 2008 by
Uganda Telecom Mobile, and Orange Uganda has
said it plans to provide a 3G service within 2009.
The fixed-line operators Uganda Telecom and MTN
Uganda offer a range of data services, but mobile
phones seem likely to predominate as the means for
accessing the Internet. According to UCC, mobile
wireless Internet accounts have continued to grow,
rising to an estimated 215 000 by March 2009, compared
with about 22 000 fixed-line subscriptions.
This is partly due to the emergence of new entrants
into the retail broadband services. However, the regulator
estimates that, with the dramatic increase in
the number of public facilities such as Internet cafés,
around 2.5 million people were going online.
Broadband Internet access will be boosted with
the 2500-km fibre-optic national backbone network
being installed across the country, using investment
by the Ugandan government and the private sector.
It is soon to be connected to the international
submarine cables that are due to land on the coast
of Kenya. A regional regulatory taskforce has been established to set up frameworks and standards for
inter-State access and pricing regulation of sea cable
systems.
The new players who have rolled out commercial
services in the broadband segment include Tangerine
(Nomad) Communications and TMP Uganda. Warid
Telecom, which previously provided voice services
only, has also joined the fray to offer both fixed and
mobile Internet services.
Reaching the countryside
Because the Ugandan mobile market is very competitive,
prices have fallen and average revenue per
user (ARPU) is decreasing. In response, companies
are looking to expand into rural and other communities
that have previously been underserved. The government
has also backed major initiatives to expand
telecommunication services and the Internet to rural
areas, partly supported by a universal service fund
known as the Rural Communications Development
Fund (RCDF).
Essentially, the RCDF is intended to act as a means
of intervention to ensure that basic communication
services of acceptable quality are accessible, at affordable
prices and at reasonable distances, by all
people in Uganda. The Fund also aims to promote
use of modern information and communication technologies
(ICT) by introducing at least one “vanguard”
institution and supporting the establishment of an
Internet point of presence (PoP) in every district.
Most districts in Uganda now have some of the
following facilities as a result of implementing the
RCDF: Internet PoP, Internet cafés, ICT training centres,
public payphones, multipurpose community
telecentres, ICT laboratories in government-aided
secondary schools, e-health or telemedicine projects,
and call centres. In addition, a number of research
and postal support projects have been implemented.
One of the most popular services in the countryside
could be “mobile money”, or the ability to
make payments and store credit on a mobile phone.
Companies are already moving to satisfy this demand.
In March 2009, Uganda Telecom and MTN
Uganda each launched mobile banking, while in June
Zain began offering its “Zap” service. Customers can
top up (or transfer) mobile airtime, send and receive
money, and pay utility bills.
SMS on the rise
The short message service (SMS) is popular in
Uganda. According to UCC, some 294 million SMS
messages were sent during the January–March 2009
period, compared to 190 million in the preceding
quarter (October–December 2008). And operators
now offer information services via SMS, including
news, weather forecasts and sports results. The use
of SMS to ask for information from expert sources is
another way that communications can be improved for rural residents. Such a service was launched in
June 2009, for people to send a query by SMS on, for
example, farming techniques, and receive an answer
from a searchable database. For users who have difficulties with reading or writing, “voice SMS” is particularly
useful, through which people can send pictures
or short voice messages. Uganda Telecom and Warid
Telecom are among those providing this service
The digital switchover
 Radio broadcasts began in Uganda in 1952, and
television was available from 1963. Both types of
broadcasting were provided solely by the government
until liberalization in the early 1990s. Since
then, there has been a large increase in the number
of private radio and television stations. The number
of licensed radio stations now stands at 222, of which
192 are operational, while 35 of the 50 licensed television
stations are on air.
At ITU’s Regional Radiocommunication Conference
in 2006, it was agreed that, by 2015, broadcasting
would be switched entirely from analogue to digital
networks in Africa, Europe, the Middle East and the
Islamic Republic of Iran. In Uganda, the government
is considering the consultation document “Digital
Broadcasting Migration Strategy”, issued in April
2009. This proposes that the country should make
an earlier switchover, in December 2012, and that at
least one more signal distributor should be licensed
in addition to the public Uganda Broadcasting
Corporation.
There is recognition in Uganda of the challenges
that must be met in order to migrate to digital broadcasting
— from the need for consumers to install
set-top boxes, to harmonization with neighbouring countries. But it is also seen as having great potential
in supporting the country’s social and economic
development.
Growth area
According to ITU data, in July 1999, Uganda became
the first African country — and only one of
a dozen in the world — where the number of mobile
users surpassed that of fixed-line subscribers.
And analysts Pyramid Research anticipate that over
the next few years, Uganda will experience Africa’s
second highest percentage rise in mobile subscriptions
(after Cameroon), and that by 2014, more than
70 per cent of Ugandans will have mobile phones.
Pyramid Research also foresees rapid growth in fixed
and wireless broadband access to the Internet. The
future looks bright for Uganda’s communications
sector.
* Estimated by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division
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