The Monitor

­MTN Uganda has given the incumbent landline operator, Uganda Telecom 21 days to settle an outstanding invoice for Shs22 billion (US$8.8 million) otherwise it will seek to have the company declared bankrupt.

The invoice is for interconnection fees built up over three previous court cases.

MTN through their attorneys, Kampala Associated Advocates (KAA), say should UTL fail to pay the demand, then it will seek a court order to wind up the company.

Telecoms with poor service quality will soon start to pay 10 per cent of their gross income in penalties, if the communications regulator goes ahead to implement a new penalties schedule that seeks to curb the continued deterioration in service provision.
Uganda Communications Commission told Daily Monitor yesterday that in consultation with stakeholders, the regulator had formulated a penalties schedule for telecoms that have failed to meet contractual obligations.

The government has said it is not certain of beating the December 31, 2012 deadline that requires East Africa member states to have switched from analogue to digital broadcasting.

A delay in migration from analogue to digital is likely to slow investment in business opportunities that accrue from digital transmission. Addressing journalists in Kampala yesterday at the launch of the Comesa digital migration workshop in Kampala, Mr Nyombi Thembo, the state minister for ICT, said digital migration is a huge process that will be hard to accomplish in the set time.

MTN is opposed to President Museveni's idea of telecoms selling some of their shares to Ugandans through the domestic stock market, according to Sifiso Dabengwa, the group's president and CEO.

"You go to capital markets for capital reasons not for regulatory reasons. You can have a political view about listing but listing is fundamentally a corporate finance decision,"  Dabengwa said at a news conference in Kampala on Wednesday.

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