Kampala meeting charts regional telecoms future

The East African Communications Organization (EACO) says it was established to strengthen and promote cooperation in the development and provision of postal, telecommunications and broadcasting services in the East African Community, according to its website.

EACO has traditionally brought together regulators, telecommunications companies and postal operators from East African Community member states to deliberate on common areas of intervention that would enhance communications through the region.

Fifteen years ago, East African telecommunications and postal operators were largely government-owned monopolies focusing mainly on telecommunications. Their meetings were heavily restricted, loaded with government protocol and secrecy. But last week’s EACO Congress, which was held in Kampala, was a stark contrast to the traditional EACO of  yesteryear.

It still brought together operators and regulators, but now in an open forum that included academia, investors and internet players.

Historically, EACO discussions centred on regional telecommunication themes such as voice communications, roaming tariffs, satellite communications, frequency allocations, amongst others.

Last week’s agenda, however, was clearly more internet than telecommunications -oriented , with themes like digital broadcasting, cyber-security, internet exchange points, e-commerce, internet numbering hoarding the agenda.

REGIONAL APPROACH

This was inevitable, considering that the Internet has become the meeting point for all things telecommunications.  Today, your telephone call or television broadcast is more likely to be converted to digital format and transmitted over the internet than it was fifteen years ago.

Your Skype account has changed the way policymakers should look at roaming charges, given that one only needs internet access to side-step those exaggerated  voice charges .

Furthermore, WhatsApp accounts are rapidly replacing the overpriced SMS or text messages that have made many mobile operators laugh all the way to the bank.

Goods and services have also moved online, hence the regional ecommerce concerns.  More and more East Africans are searching and buying goods online, some of which are of a digital nature.  

The online popularity of movies, music, books and software has governments wondering where and how to tax them.

The question of cyber-security was equally concerning, because  traditional thugs have also upped their game and moved online.  

They lurk behind each online transaction, perpetuate child pornography and distribute illegal drugs online.  Their crime transcends both geographic and political borders and therefore only a regional approach can effectively contain them.

EPIC MEETING

At the heart of tracking cyber-criminals and their activities lie Internet Numbers. Unlike telephone numbers, Internet Numbers are managed by an entirely different set of actors, under the ICANN and Regional Internet Registry (RIR) system. For the first time, EACO resolved to engage with these actors in a way that was not confrontational.

The invitation extended to  ISOC-Africa, one of the key actors in Africa’s internet space, was in line with this spirit.

ISOC is the home or the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the folks who define most of the internet standards we have today. ISOC led a full-day session at the Congress, where they deliberated mainly on Internet Governance.

It was an epic meeting between two actors with structurally different cultures: the state-oriented, conservative and often autocratic telecommunication entities and the non-state, liberal, internet actors who prefer the bottom-up, rough consensus type of decision-making that echoes the academic origin of the Internet.

It has been fifteen years coming, but there seems to be light at the end of the tunnel.  The fact that two different and often conflicting groups of actors can share a forum and have a conversation about the future of communications is truly a new dawn for East Africans.

Mr Walubengo is a lecturer at the Multimedia University of Kenya's Faculty of Computing and IT. Twitter:@jwalu email: [email protected]