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By TechnoMag Staff

The Postal and Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of Zimbabwe (POTRAZ) recently gathered various legal minds from the telecommunications sector to craft the infrastructure sharing framework following the minister’s pronouncement to collectively come out with a national policy.

The drafting framework held from July 27-30 2015 at Imba Matombo was crafted by Legal experts drawn from the majority of telecommunication providers including; TelOne, Econet, NetOne, Telecel, Powertel, Africom, Telecontract and Liquid and is now being submitted to the minister before due procedures which will see it sail through Parliament as a Bill.

The purpose of the legal consultative workshop was to consolidate the agreed principles into a framework that would facilitate mandatory infrastructure sharing thereby improving the current framework provided for under the Postal and Telecommunications (Interconnection Guidelines) Regulations, 2001 published in Statutory Instrument 28 of 2001.

POTRAZ Acting Director, Legal Services, Mrs Tsitsi Mariwo-Mbanje indicated that the objective of the new legislative framework is to provide a clear roadmap that will guide the sharing of existing and future infrastructure in an effort to reduce costs, increase quality and connectivity.

The legal practitioner added that infrastructure sharing is a concept that has been tried and tested regionally and internationally and back home there is already some form of sharing on the ground which has not been comprehensive enough to reduce the costs of service provision in the country.

She also stated that in order to facilitate the implementation of the new regulatory framework POTRAZ will carry out an audit of the existing infrastructure to identify and create a database of infrastructure that is shareable and that which is not.

The sharing will be certified by the regulatory authority whenever an individual operator requests to share with another.

This is done in order to ensure fairness in the process. However, for the new infrastructure, minimum design specifications that take into account sharing requirements shall apply.

The draft framework will be presented to all stakeholders at an Open House consultative Forum to be held on August 28 2015 at the Holiday Inn in Harare.