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By Sami Zaptia.
Tripoli, 31 August 2013:
Speaking at Wednesday’s (August 28th) press conference, Communications and Informatics Minister Osama Siala said that the draft . . .[restrict]Telecommunications reform law has been presented to the GNC.
Siala said that the old law does not allow for competition, but that his Ministry has not waited for the law to be reformed to allow competition to commence in the market.
Minister Siala was asked by a member of the media about the poor internet service and the inability for consumers to purchase internet services. He was also asked why his Ministry was not allowing competition in the internet supply market.
The Minister said that there had been 100,000 modems in store of which 40,000 were sold in June and sales continued thereafter. There is a delay in the arrival of another shipment, he explained, but he promised that the equipment should be in the shops this week.
The Minister did not indicate whether the internet network was being expanded to handle more capacity or whether it was simply more customers using the same capacity.
Furthermore, with regards to opening up the market and reducing the state monopoly, Siala said that “privately owned companies were the core of our work from the beginning. We have started by giving 3 licences to private satellite internet service providers and we have given 30 licences to internet service providers and 25 companies in the satellite services sector”.
“There are 4 private sector companies operating within Tripoli. It is only a matter of time (until more companies enter the market and provide more services and competition)”
“We have already started to diversify the market”, he stressed.
Asked about the attacks on critical national ITC infrastructure, Minister Siala replied that his Ministry had tried to protect installations. He referred to the recent attack on an installation in the east of the country saying that while it was easier to protect installations within cities it was more difficult to do so in rural areas.
“Libya has 7,000 km of communications highways and another 5,000 km will be added. But we cannot protect all of the places”. [/restrict]
