Ups And Downs Of The Zimbabwean Media
Its been a contradictory few weeks for the media, when one looks at developments in the world of Zimbabwean communications and journalism.
First, Acting Information Minister Paul Mangwana announced that the government is prepared to amend some aspects of AIPPA. ZUJ President Mathew Takaona, is reported to have scoffed at the idea saying they have already done so but nothing has come out of their suggestions.
ZimOnline reported recently, an occasion, which coincided with the sabotage of our mailbox, that government is to intensify its censorship of the Internet.
Also, the Independent reports last week, that the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Transport And Communication is re-examining some aspects of Interception of Communication Bill, with a view to change them (hopefully for the better). A few days later the it emerges a statutory instrument 70 has been enacted, to gives the state-run Tel-One a chance to earn some foreign currency while a enjoying a monopoly on international cell phone traffic. What is going on here?
Attached is a Statement from Econet Wireless Sure Kamhunga on the latest saga on government censorship.
A new controversial law being introduced by the Ministry of Transport and Communications could force Zimbabwean mobile phone subscribers to pay for international outgoing calls in foreign currency if it is allowed to stand.
Statutory Instrument (SI) that was gazetted on 17th March 2006 and becomes law on 1st November 2006 requires mobile phone companies to route their international traffic through TelOne. Econet believes the Statutory Instrument is being introduced in a bid to subsidise TelOne by giving it some of the revenue from the cellular operators, particularly Econet which is now much larger than TelOne.

Explaining why the new law will result in people having to pay for international calls in foreign currency, Econet spokesman Sure Kamhunga said: “The people who have drafted this Statutory Instrument unfortunately do not understand how this industry works, and if this SI is allowed to stand, there will be complete chaos and people will either face black outs on international calls or have to pay in foreign currency. We will have the same problem in telecoms that we currently have in power.”

Wherever a subscriber on a network in Zimbabwe makes an international call to a subscriber on another network overseas, the Zimbabwe subscriber pays the home network for the call in Zimbabwe dollars, but the home network still has to pay the international network to which the receiving subscriber overseas is connected, what is called a termination rate, and this is charged in US dollars between networks.

On the other hand, when a person in Zimbabwe receives an international call, their home network charges the operator who sent the call in US dollars. At the end of each month, the operators then exchange invoices for calls made between their customers. The operator whose customers made the most calls ends up paying out money to the other operator. Operators generally try to get a balance in the flow of traffic between them so that there is no net payout.

Diverting incoming traffic for customers on mobile networks to come through TelOne’s gateway means that the mobile operators will not have any foreign currency to settle with operators overseas. This means they will either be cut off or they will be forced to charge their Zimbabwean customers in foreign currency for international calls.

The state owned fixed line operator has been running up huge bills with international operators because it is unable to manage the settlement process between operators.

TelOne has already publicly admitted that it does not have a billing system to monitor incoming international calls, and is often more than six months behind on sending out bills to other networks. They are therefore forced to pay out more efficient international operators whilst not having currency to settle. TelOne also charges lower termination rates to other operators than it is charged by other operators.

This bizarre practice has led to accusations that TelOne does this to facilitate a practice known in the industry as “re-filing” by grey operators. These are small illegal operators who have lots of lines from TelOne which they use to land traffic destined to TelOne and pocket money on international calls. A lot of these companies are owned by people with influence to get lines from TelOne. However, TelOne reportedly cannot clamp down on them because it does not have a proper billing system to identify them. Ironically some of these grey operators are well known to the public and TelOne.>
Econet Wireless CEO Douglas Mboweni said that contrary to perceptions in certain political circles, Econet does not make a lot of money from international calls.

“International incoming calls account for less than 10% of the total revenue generated by Econet. We are a public company and this information is available for anyone to see. The Reserve Bank knows exactly how much we make and it’s not that much. What is important about the income we get from international incoming calls is used to off-set the foreign currency obligations we get each time a customer makes an international call. If we did not have that off set mechanism our customers would have to pay for international calls in foreign currency,” said Mr. Mboweni.
>The same off set mechanism was used in international roaming. When Zimbabwe used to have a lot of international visitors who used to roam on local networks the Zimbabwean operators used to earn foreign currency. This allowed them to charge their customers going overseas roaming costs in Zimbabwe dollars. When the international visitors dried up the Zimbabwean operators were then forced to charge in foreign currency. According to Mr. Mboweni, this was also the case if the operators had their international incoming traffic diverted to TelOne.
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