SWAZI COMPANY APPLIES FOR MOBILE LICENCE

SCCOM acting Chief Executive Officer Stan Motsa.

MBABANE – Swaziland could have a second mobile phone operator by 2015.

The company likely to compete head to head with Swazi MTN is known as Swavitel.
It is a Swazi company.

Stan Motsa, Acting Chief Executive Officer of the Swaziland Communications Commission (SCCOM) has confirmed this development.
Motsa, acting CEO of the regulator of the country’s telecommunications industry, said his office was engaged on a process of considering an application for licence of a mobile telephony service provider, submitted by Swavitel.

It was registered with the office of the Registrar of Companies, which is under the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Trade on November 11, 2013. It has one listed director in Mthunzi Morris Shabangu, a Swazi man, aged 35.
However, it has other directors who are foreign and based in Vietnam.

Vietnam is a country in South East Asia, bordered on the north by China and to the west by Laos and Cambodia.
Speaking exclusively to the Times SUNDAY, Motsa said the Swazi company had a connection with Vietnam-based mobile operator Viettel Telecomm.

He said its directors were part of the successful Vietnam’s telecommunication Viettel Group brand, which has also established a partnership operation in Mozambique.

Motsa said the new company would be an independent operator and had neither partnered with SPTC nor Swazi MTN.
He said just like Swazi MTN, if granted permission, Swavitel would use the Swaziland Post and Telecommunication Corporations (SPTC)’s backbone infrastructure.

If Swavitel is granted the licence the company would compete with Swazi MTN, which presently operates under a monopolistic telecommunications market, as the country’s only provider of mobile telephony services.

Both companies would compete for customers, in a market where Swazi MTN, already has 800 000 subscribers from a population of about 1.1 million people. Motsa said the licensing process was being delayed by the absence of legislation his office would use to licence the company.
He said the legislation was still at the drafting stage. “We are drafting the legislation with help from experts provided by the International Telecommunications Union, as well as local stakeholders within the country’s communications sector,” he said.

Motsa said all stakeholders, including representatives of Swavitel, had made an input to the law being drafted.
He said his office was at the stage of validating the inputs made by stakeholders.

The regulator said the next stage was to compile and submit a complete draft to Cabinet, which would make its own input before the Bill was tabled in Parliament for enactment into law.

Motsa also said the cost of the mobile telephony licence for the Swazi network was not yet determined.
“We are working with stakeholders to come up with a pricing policy that would contain all relevant costs for operating a mobile company in the country,” he said.

“Swavitel is not a company. It’s parent company in Vietnam which also operates a subsidiary mobile operator company, in Mozambique.”
This Mozambican company, Movitel, is a joint venture between Vietnam Telecoms and SPI-Gestão e Investimentos, the investment company of Mozambique’s ruling party, FRELIMO.  FRELIMO stands for Frente de Libertação de Moçambique, which can be translated to Mozambique Liberation Front.

Launched in 2010, Movitel aims to cover 80 per cent of the Mozambican population with its network within three years and pledged an initial investment of E4.6 billion to establish its nationwide network. 
By the end of 2012, the population of Mozambique stood at over 25. 2 million people. Calls are charged at about E1.43 per unit through the Movitel network.

Dumisani Ndlangamandla, Minister of Information, Communications and Technology, recently told Parliament that the mobile telephone service monopoly ended in 2008 in Swaziland.  He said a certain company had shown interest in setting up shop but did not know what had happened to it.
Six years from 2008, there is no other company registered to provide mobile telephone services.
The minister was addressing concerns from the portfolio committee which wanted an update on the current situation in the telecommunications sector.

MPs had asked the minister why there was still no company providing mobile telephony network to give Swazi MTN competition while also improving service delivery.
The MPs said without competition, consumers would always suffer inefficient service.

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