ESWATINI MOBILE TO RETURN BASE STATIONS EQUIPMENT

MBABANE - After all has been said and done, the equipment for base stations meant for rural schools will be returned to where they belong next Monday.

That is if a statement issued by local fast-growing mobile telecommunications company, Eswatini Mobile is anything to go by. The statement was issued by the management of the company whose Chief Executive Officer is Jeff Penberton and it stated that the equipment has already arrived in the country. Recently, this publication reported how equipment for 10 of 20 base stations donated to government by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) had become the centre of controversy.

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The equipment for the base stations that are meant to bridge the digital divide by providing free internet access to rural schools and communities is under the custody of the Eswatini Posts and Telecommunications Corporation (EPTC). The entire equipment is worth USD800 000 (about E12 million). Questions have been raised on how the lease agreement came about and this prompted the EPTC Board to institute an investigation. To ensure that the ongoing investigation was properly executed, the Board granted EPTC Managing Director Petros Dlamini an authorised leave for 12 days. The leave elapsed last Friday, but the Board, as reported by this publication on Monday, has not completed the investigation. Worth noting is that Dlamini’s contract at the parastatal elapsed last Sunday and Board Chairman, Mtiti Fakudze, informed this publication that a recruitment process for the vacant post would commence. When the story broke, there were allegations that the equipment for the base stations had been sold to Eswatini Mobile and Acting Minister of Information, Communication and Technology, Manqoba Khumalo, called upon the EPTC Board of Directors to look into the matter and give him an update. This was then that the Board took the decision to investigate.

In the statement issued yesterday, the Eswatini Mobile management broke its silence and detailed its stance on the matter.  The company stated that it loaned the equipment from the government parastatal. “According to a confidential Memorandum of Agreement (MoA) that was signed between Eswatini Mobile and EPTC, dated March 26, 2020, Eswatini Mobile was loaned equipment to enable us to complete the deployment of 10 base stations,” reads part of the statement.  According to the company, this took place in March at the height of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. “Eswatini Mobile approached its business partner and loaned the equipment in order to cope with the surge in traffic at the time. To facilitate this, a memorandum of agreement was signed which required that Eswatini Mobile should replace the equipment used with new equipment. Due to the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic and logistic challenges, there has been a delay in receiving the new equipment to be returned from China,” it was stated in the statement.

Replacement

The company assured that the replacement base stations equipment has now arrived in Eswatini and will be returned to EPTC by end of business Monday March 8, 2021. “We look forward to continuing and growing a mutually beneficial business relationship with EPTC,” it was stated. Following the statement, a comment was sought from Minister Khumalo and his response was, “I will be happy to see the equipment for the base stations returned to EPTC and installed in the schools  and clinics as soon as possible because the project is now a year behind schedule”. It should be noted that after concerns were raised about the equipment, Dlamini came out to dispel the allegations. He admitted that the equipment for the 10 base stations was indeed given to Eswatini Mobile, but there was no money involved; instead, this was a lease. The former MD explained that Eswatini Mobile already knew that EPTC had equipment for base stations that was lying idle in its warehouse and that they had not been deployed because the parastatal had issues of upgrading its core network. Explaining further, Dlamini said Eswatini Mobile wanted to also upgrade for issues of capacity in order to cater for the demand that had arisen because of the COVID-19 lockdown.

Deteriorating

“They then approached us and asked that instead of holding on to base stations’ equipment that was deteriorating, why don’t we lease equipment for 10 of these to them to boost their capacity, predominantly in the COVID-19 period,” Dlamini elaborated.
Explaining about the agreement, Dlamini said it was structured in such a way that Eswatini Mobile had ordered its own base stations’ equipment and once it arrived they would be shipped directly to EPTC and not bring back the ones leased to them because then they would have been used. He also clarified that such a lease agreement was not out of the ordinary because as operators they did share resources, just like they previously did with MTN Eswatini in terms of spectrum and sites. By definition, a mobile phone base station is a transmission and reception station in a fixed location, consisting of one or more receive or transmit antenna, microwave dish and electronic circuitry, used to handle cellular traffic. The base station maintains the communication between the network and the mobile users through a radio link. The geographic area covered by a base station is called a cell.

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