Thursday, March 28, 2024

Vodafone did not apply for Voice Licence-ZICTA

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ZICTA says Vodafone Zambia did not apply for a licence to provide voice services, allaying speculations that the UK based telecoms provider was sidelined when ZICTA issued a licence to UZI Zambia Limited.

ZICTA Spokesperson Ngabo Nankonde said only two companies namely UZI Zambia Limited and Broadband Square Limited applied for the licence to operate both data and voice licences in Zambia.

Ms. Nankonde clarified that Vodafone which already holds a data licence in Zambia did not apply for a voice licence on their own accord.

She said ZICTA accepted UZI’s application after a technical and business evaluation showed that the company had the best strategy to grow their network in Zambia.

“Given their presence in Angola, we feel they will leverage the relationship to improve Zambia’s connective to the Angola fibre backbone and in turn to the Subsea cables landing in Angola and create a direct route to South North America to through the South Atlantic cable system and thereby connecting Brazil to the United States and providing a shorter connection to the West African cable system,” Ms. Nankonde said.

She added, “So we were looking just beyond presence of a company, we were looking at what they can offer to have cheaper tariffs and improve connectivity.”
Ms. Nankonde said the major shareholders in UZI are based in the Netherlands and have pledged to invest 350 million dollars in their Zambian operations and create 450 direct job opportunities.

“We also examined the level of investment and what technology they are willing to bring in. They are bringing in LTE technology that supports both 4.5 and 5G across the country,” she said.

Ms. Nankonde added, “As ZICTA, we believe that competition is good and we know that a 4th mobile operator will bring competition. It should be noted that what we have given UZI is a notification and once they accept the notification, then they will start working on their plans of extending their services to the rural areas and putting up 100 towers.”

She said ZICTA is interested in good quality of service and extension of services to underserved areas of the country adding that the authority is hoping at the end of this year, Zambia would have a 100 percent coverage.

11 COMMENTS

  1. There you have it. Transparent. Forward looking by Zambian govt thru zicta to identify connectivity to the undersea cable and bring in internet cheaply over time. Uwafitala lwakwe. Well done govt. Good job Zicta.

    • Any wise business mind could not have found it worthwhile to shred US$100,000 on a tender where interest of principals has been palpable as ever. Ask Kavindele and many other Zambian interest Groups. Some multinationals in consortium with more financial leverage, equal experience and ambitious plans of revolutionizing the Zambian TelCo industry found it a non-realizable dream to go for ZICTA’S Voice license. Telco voice licenses attract many players yet this one suffered apathy because they know Zambia is for Chinese. Let Vodafone become a Chinese firm and apply. They will be given a 5th license overnight.

      Good luck Uzi Mobile!

  2. Major shareholders in UZI are based in Portugal and are involved in chewing the corruption proceeds from the Dos Santos Era.
    UZI recently came into telecom industry compared to Vodaphone or Vodacom.You wonder what criteria they used to attract bids from telecom providers.Something is fishy here.

  3. ZICTA is expected to have Zambia’s interests at the fore. This has not been obvious. They seem to be aloof when they should have been our advocates. The fiber optics networks don’t seem to have any clear policy guidance. Of the sea cables, SAT-3 & other West African coast submarine cable facilities & their landing points vs East African EASSy, etc. Being inland, serious analysis by ZICTA clearly showing where the advantages lie, should be in public domain.

  4. Just thinking. If the UZI money was not clean, wouldn’t the Angolan government approached our government over it?

  5. We need a statement from Vodafone to confirm this because we do not trust ZICTA. Infact if there were no credible bidders points at something even sinister because telecom is a lucrative business everyone wants to go to consumers especially the Zambian consumers . BTW I see no reason why Vodafone would rather just operate a data licence because technically it means Zambia will have 5 carriers.

  6. Even waiting before they auction the license would have made sense. I do not recall a situation like that even in Europe were a spectrum licence has only two ‘invisible’ bidders. Any person who has worked or knows something about telecommunication can comment. Infact even experts at at Zamtel, MTN, Airtel would find this strange. Someone thinks all Zambians are ignorant you are fooling yourself. Remember we see everything!

  7. Corruption some times am ashamed of my country,other telecommunication are give us zambins poor services and nothing is being done,why it’s high time we need to change our mind set.somethinh straight forward.

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