JOHANNESBURG, South Africa-Witness Mangwende, Zimbabwean minister of transport and communications, has informed parliament that the regulatory body, the Postal and Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of Zimbabwe (POTRAZ), has been dissolved amid allegations of irregularities concerning the licensing of the two independent mobile networks, Telecel and Econet.
Mangwende added that the office of the attorney general had been instructed to investigate the recently formed interconnect agreement between the two networks. The minister cited loss of potential revenues to the state and the threat to national security that the two networks posed by operating an international gateway.
The Zimbabwean opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change, struck out at the minister, saying the announcement is nothing more than an effort to ensure the monopoly enjoyed by the state-owned network TelOne.
A Supreme Court ruling in Zimbabwe held that the fixed-line monopoly of TelOne’s predecessor, the Posts and Telecommunications Company, was illegal.
Mangwende said the investigation would include a close inspection of the two mobile licenses with the possibility that the licenses may be revoked.
Sure Chimbga, a spokesman for the Econet operations, said the interconnect agreements and the international gateways licenses were all above board and would be construed as normal business practices anywhere in the world.
