By Scoop Reporter
GOVERNMENT will this year erect an additional 300 communication towers across the country to address the challenge of the availability of internet and mobile phone services in the country, Minister of Technology and Science Felix Mutati has said.
According to a statement issued by the First Secretary for Press and Tourism at the Zambia Embassy, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Inutu Mwanza, Mr. Mutati says Government’s vision is to ensure that every part of the country has good connectivity and access to mobile phone services and the internet.
The Minister said the recent Presidential visit in Doha is already bearing fruit as one of the biggest providers of internet, Liquid Telecom, has committed to provide internet services to all secondary schools to ease the challenges of internet access that schools have been grappling with.
He says resolving the internet connectivity problem remains a top priority for the Government.
And the Minister disclosed that the number of mobile money frauds had reduced drastically due to measures that the Government through ZICTA had implemented.
The Minister, however, said some unscrupulous people were still scamming people with mobile money transfers. He was quick to say the Government, through ZICTA and other law enforcement agencies, was on high alert to curb the vice.
He also confirmed that the move to deregister 2 million sim cards last year was one of the strategies to curb mobile money scamming.
And on complaints of poor connectivity by some service providers, the minister assured the public that ZICTA had appropriate technology to measure the quality of connectivity and that appropriate penalties were being mated on such providers.
The Minister was speaking when he transited through Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to Geneva to attend a World Summit on Information Society, whose core purpose is to see how the improvement in ICTS can alleviate the challenges of internet connectivity.
