The telecommunications regulatory authority, the Botswana Telecommunications Authority (BTA) has announced that they have ordered phone companies ÔÇô Be Mobile, Mascom and Orange to cut down their prices.
Talking to the media this past week, BTA said they have instructed the phone companies to reduce both the wholesale and retail tariffs.
Presumably the instruction to cut down prices comes after recommendations made by consultants that were engaged by BTA over the last two years or so.
While we commend BTA for the bold step it has taken to cut costs, we think there is still some explaining to do.
First of all, we are rather taken aback by the time it has taken BTA to act.
Calls to cut phone prices have been for far too long
.
It is not like phone companies recently increased their charges, stealthily and BTA only recently discovered.
When did BTA learn that tariffs were so high?
That is an important question that BTA has to answer.
How did the charges get so high as to call for so huge the cuts as announced by BTA?
What has happened for there to be justification for what amounts to be brutal slashing of tariffs as that announced by BTA.
Whatever the answers, we strongly believe somebody at BTA has been sleeping on the job.
This kind of indecision cannot be allowed to go unchecked.
It would seem like the rot started years ago.
That also has to be established and if possible get the blame apportioned.
It still baffles us how in the first place I could have escaped the attention of BTA that phone companies were overcharging their services when we now learn the reductions in tariffs will in some instances go down by as much as 40 percent.
That to us is the height of irresponsibility and ineptitude on the part of BTA.
We have always believed that BTA was well equipped with such technical expertise that allowed them to monitor prices in relation to what was happening regionally and globally.
If that was indeed the case, it therefore boggles our mind how it could have happened that prices could escalate so high as to warrant the deep cuts that BTA is now ferociously enforcing.
BTA’s recklessness and schizophrenic attitude aside, it has to be put into perspective the extent to which Botswana as a country has lost out in terms of competitiveness as a result of the exorbitantly high prices.
How did it happen under the noses of an organization that boasts world class technology like BTA, not to mention the highly trained experts that work at the organisation.
Instead of celebrating the tariff cuts, it is our considered view that there should first be a soul searching on just how we ended up where we are, not to say what implications there are.
Now that BTA has itself investigated Botswana’s tarriff structure, we hope that somebody will be bold and courageous enough as to call for the investigation of BTA in return.
At the centre here is for the public to know the length of time BTA has allowed phone companies to carry out what, from preliminary detail, amounts to looting.
It will be impossible for the phone companies to pay back their clients, but it certainly will be possible for their taxes to Government to be significantly raised.
In turn, Government would use the money raised to develop the rural areas that more than ten years since they (cell-phone companies) first arrived, they still have not extended their coverage to.
It is our hope that the minister responsible for telecommunications will answer many underlying implications inherent in the BTA announcement that they will be drastically cutting phone tariffs because they have been found to be too high.
Like we say somewhere above, many foreign investors who in the past had been lured to come here by such agencies like BEDIA could to set in, citing prohibitively high telephone and other utility costs.
During that time, BTA lamely kept quite when the phone companies said the prices compared to regional tarriff structures.
We now know that was not the case. And that the companies that chose to settle else where actually had a point.
In other jurisdictions, what BTA did in being complicit in undermining national policy developments easily passes for treason.
We call for an enquiry on the matter.
