Since 2002, several African countries have been forced to liberalize their markets for telecommunications services, and this under the General Agreement on Trade in Services, GATS in acronym. However, this liberalization has more impact on the cell phone while the phone market is still in most countries of sub-Saharan Africa, under the public monopoly. But then how to reduce institutional barriers and consider what policy to improve the supply of telecommunications services in Africa?
Until the mid-80s, the telecommunication services and international trade service were regarded as separate areas of policy. The development of policies and regulations in the national telecom service was related to their configuration monopoly. International aspects related to interconnection issues, standards and principles of pricing and accounting discussed in the context of the international advisory committee of the International Telecommunication Union in ITU symbol or bilateral agreements between providers of international services.
The arrival of New Technologies of Information and Communications and the increasing globalization of the telecom sector have highlighted the issues concerning the regulatory barriers to trade in telecom services. Countries have the feeling that global liberalization of trade in their final prejudicial. The reluctance of these countries towards the liberalization of trade in telecom services on a global scale seems to reflect several concerns.
At the moment, the main international rules aimed at reducing trade barriers in the telecom sector are the General Agreement on Trade in Services and the Agreement on Basic Telecommunications, which have given rise to domestic unilateral reforms in most countries of sub-Saharan Africa, including Congo-Kinshasa. For the latter, the initial regulatory framework (Legislative Order No. 254/TELEC 1940) held the monopoly of the state, with OCPT and RENATELSAT as natural monopolists. This is the monopoly lasted until the end of the 1980s. Indeed, the Congolese telecommunications sector will be a “de facto liberalization” to the years 1989 with the entry of private cellular operators (Comcel and TELECEL).
Despite this momentum, it will take more than twelve years for the legacy of colonization is reformed by the publication of the Framework Law No. 013/2002 on Telecommunications and the Law No 014/2002 establishing the Autorité de Régulation des Postes et Télécommunications du Congo, en sigle ARPTC. These laws will pave the way for competition and will the massive influx of private operators on the Congolese telecommunications market from 2002. It is unfortunately far from being a competitive market, the Congolese telecommunications market appears to be characterized by an oligopoly with two operators that seem to dictate the game on the market and where the rest of operators are merely followers.
Reduce trade barriers
The main multilateral rules aimed at reducing trade barriers in the provision of telecommunications services are among others: (i) The General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). The agreement contains a number of obligations and rules that are binding on all member countries regardless of the specific commitments contained in their list of concessions in respect of certain services sectors, the general provisions concerning issues such as dispute settlement. It defines a set of obligations that apply only to sectors towards which the member in question has taken commitments in its schedule of concessions. (ii) of the GATS Annex on Telecommunications.
The Annex provides for the obligation to grant service providers from other members access to public telecommunications networks under terms and conditions reasonable and not discriminatory for the provision of a service included in the list of member . (c) Reference Paper on Basic Telecommunications. This document was developed to help countries establish appropriate regulatory structures benefiting from other experiences. It contains a general commitment to maintain adequate measures to prevent major suppliers from engaging in practices contrary to competition. These anti-competitive practices can be either the anti-competitive Equalization, or the use of information obtained from competitors, or, finally, denial of information communication technology and trade.
Indeed, the practice of anti-fare competition is for a provider or a group of service that has market power to use the profits or rents above normal in that it provides a segment to subsidize an activity deficit in a segment of the competitive market. (d) the requests of members of the WTO (Doha Round). Industrialized countries require that countries commit to greater liberalization of the telecommunications sector and endorse the document. Many developing countries to middle income who have already liberalized their sectors are now asking that other developing countries do in turn. They are looking for markets for their telecommunications companies, they seek to reduce tariffs for international calls at local level by lowering the costs of regulations, and seeking international call costs lower for multinationals in these other countries.
Telecommunications services in sub-Saharan Africa
On telecommunications performance in sub-Saharan Africa, two extreme cases can be mentioned, that of the DRC or the level of income per capita is 143 U.S. dollars and only one line for 5000 people while at the other extreme , Mauritius, the level of income per capita is 3957 U.S. dollars and a phone line for 4 people at this figure shows clearly that a significant investment in infrastructure is needed in several African countries before making telecommunications services available the bulk of the population and before the WTO is a priority.
In terms of policies in place, African governments have chosen different rhythms, approaches and temporal arrangements to deal with challenges. Their choice is focused on: (i) the restructuring of the sector (from public corporations without capital stock of private rights, (ii) privatization (with the participation of private capital or foreign companies newly formed), (ii) the introduction of competition, (iv) the opening of markets to foreign service providers and the adoption of regulations that give more importance to the mechanisms of markets and the establishment of authorities regulation independent of political powers.
Since 2002 in terms of fixed telephone, all countries in sub-Saharan Africa had given a status of joint action with their incumbent. Among these countries, 17 have already opened up the capital of the incumbent, creating stock companies formed to private or foreign, Uganda for example, introduced a partial competition before allowing foreign equity participation of the incumbent, Ghana has introduced competition duopoly and participation at the same time, the Seychelles has introduced competition in duopoly after privatization, seven countries have postponed the opening of any capital of their incumbent between 2003 — 2004, some countries have begun the privatization process, others have not yet expressed a unilateral commitment to privatization at a future date, the DRC and Togo have made progress towards a competitive market structure without privatization.
African countries also differ in their approach to regulation. The lessons that emerge on the state of competition in fixed telephony must be completed. At the moment there is no country in competition based on the facilities.
Regarding the mobile network, most countries in sub-Saharan Africa recorded a rapid growth of mobile telephony. This growth can be attributed to the introduction of digital cellular technology and the opening of the provision of mobile services to new operators. If mobile services are a complement to fixed line services in the wealthier regions of the world, they seem to be substitutes in sub-Saharan Africa and particularly in Congo-Kinshasa. Due to a lower need for protection of incumbents by the privatization policies for mobile services were more liberal than for fixed.
For some time, several African countries have made commitments under the GATS for the supply of telecommunications services. A description and first assessment of the status of specific commitments undertaken by countries in sub-Saharan Africa for the provision of telecommunications services has been made on the basis of four “modes of supply, namely: ( i) mode 1 (cross border supply of services without physical movement of the service provider. Ex: call-back), (ii) Mode 2 (consumption of services abroad), (iii) Mode 3 (commercial presence ) and mode 4 (temporary presence of the service provider).
It should be noted that barriers to the provision of telecommunications services are among the items on the agenda of ongoing negotiations and come to the WTO, where the objective is to obtain levels of gradual liberalization higher for all services covered by GATS, not just those provided in the context of telecommunications.
