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Yours truly had taken a sabbatical for a very long time, up until a screaming headline from the Herald awakened me from my slumber, effectively self-redeploying to your favourite weekly sound bites.
While last week may have been a busy one, a screaming headline by Herald stating “ Potraz has no Starlink sole, exclusivity licences” did many rounds across the social media platforms.
“The Postal and Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of Zimbabwe (Potraz) says it has issued several Internet Service Provider’s (ISP) licences to prospective and existing operators, noting none of them carries sole or exclusivity rights to partner with global satellite internet giant, Starlink.
Of course its common sense , Potraz has been offering many of these licenses before and there is no way they would offer an exclusive one today in retrogressive.
Yes many people who do not understand how licensing work thought that a Zimbabwean based licence has power over an American based company on whom they can trade with, when they have their own global partners and international ethics world wide.
Technically Potraz has no jurisdiction to licence parters for service provision it also does not decides nor regulates that area.
Potraz issues licences for various categories of telecommunication services in Zimbabwe and the ISP licence was only one of many.
“In our licence categories, we have no licences for exclusivity. Our licences are not technology-specific, in this case, the service that we are licensing is internet service provision.
“This means that anyone who has our licence, if it is an ISP, that person can go to Starlink, that person can go to Liquid, that person can use any technology,” he said.
I guess this was simple straight forward explanation by the director general to dummies !
While this was not a direct response to the social media report by presidential account, its sure.lt was a direct response to the statement, its implications and more interestingly its pre matureness and lack of tact .
It read like a statement prepared by an exciteable individual who could not wait and imagine how he woul benefit from the deal and under the same excitement, rushed to announce exclusivity outside the jurisdiction and practice of such service provision.
What exclusivity does one need from resealing an already licenced service provider with devices found world wide .
Imagine Iphonesaying it has an exclusive deal with a local company tell its devices, that would be the most stinking, reckless and soundinly corrupt deal with cleat anti trust violations.
Im happy that the power that be came out to clear their mandate, which of course in those case is just licensing, and deals that go behind the scenes are lure distributorship partnership that are beyond regulatory matters.
We wait to see now what happened as many Zimbabwean players are fighting for the LEO market to officially form the service lerovision
We are likely to see many ISP fronting to serve and deliver LEO service like Starlink with Dandemutande and , Dark Fibre Africa Liquid and Telone all having announced that they are partnering the service provider.
It was and is still pure stupidity to think that someone can have such exclusive rights ancestry after all.
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