Africa to acccess IS - 21 st May 2005

Africa: very good news last week coming from Africa. National Regulatory Authorities (NRAs) from 19 countries (Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Chad, Côte d'Ivoire, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritius, Mozambique, Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda and Zambia) have opened a critical path to some sort of harmonized framework to provide access for all in Africa to the Information Society. They decided to work closely to reduce the 'digital divide' and produced a document to fulfill this goal at the ITU. Active participation in the work of the ITU is the best way to find and influence appropriate solutions for developing countries. One already identified is using 470-600 MHz frequency bands for the purpose of deploying IMT-2000 systems. This has recently been explored in Report No. 38 published by The UMTS Forum. The UMTS Forum of course believes that adoption of 3G/UMTS by Africa could benefit its economy and its population.