Africa-Press – Tanzania. TANZANIA’S communication sector has improved significantly during the last six decades, with the construction and expansion of the National Information Communication Technology Broadband Backbone (NICTBB) infrastructure being the most notable.
As the country heads towards marking its 60th anniversary of independence, the government says that NICTBB has aided service providers in delivering communication services to the public more quickly, reliably, and cost-effectively, thus accelerating the national development by allowing citizens to use ICT.
The Minister for Information, Communications and Information Technology, Dr Ashatu Kijaji told journalists in Dodoma on Tuesday that the NICTBB facilitates the rapid transfer of high-quality data and information, contributing to the development of the telecommunications sector and thus to the nation’s economic growth.
“The National Fibre Optic Cable Network, which was built in 2009, is 8,319 kilometres long and was built in phases. It has connected 25 regions of mainland Tanzania and Zanzibar,” she stated.
She added: “For the fiscal year 2021/2022, the government has allocated 170bn/- for the construction of the NICTBB in collaboration with Tanzania Electric Supply Company (TANESCO) infrastructure, where 4,442 km will be built to reach a total of 12,761kms, equivalent to 85 per cent of the goal of 15,000 km by 2025.”
The benefits of NICTBB, according to Dr Kijaji, include a reduction in mobile phone interconnection fees from 115/- per minute in 2009 to 10.4/- in 2020. End-user costs have decreased because of the reduction, and telecommunications services have been more commonly used.
According to the minister, the sector’s growth is reflected in the increased use of mobile phones, the internet, financial transactions and the proliferation of various online service delivery systems.
For example, she said, on December 9, 1961, the then Tanganyika had 16,238 landline phones in use across the country, most of which belonged to government institutions and departments. She said there were 53,111,246 mobile phone lines and 71,405 landline phones in June 2021.
Internet users surpassed 29,152,713 for the first time since the country’s independence. “Tanzanians have found work in a variety of fields, including internet service providers, financial services agencies via mobile networks, such as online payments and doing various online businesses, systems innovation and formal employment in government and communication companies,” Dr Kijaji said.
She stated that communities’ access to a wide range of services in the country, including mobile banking and mobile money, has allowed people to pay for income taxes, licenses, land tenure, buildings, fines and other levies, water and power bills as well as other obligations without difficulty.
Dr Kijaji explained that before independence, the country’s telecommunications sector had shortcomings, with many areas lacking communications.
As a result, in 2009, the government established the Universal Communications Service Access Fund (UCSAF) to help with the responsibility of delivering telecommunications services to areas lacking communications and not attractive to the telecommunications business, particularly in rural areas.
Tanzania has 12,902 telecommunication towers, of which 2,630 provide only 2G service and 9,579 provide 2G, 3G, or 4G communication services, according to her.
Out of the 1,068 towers stated above, the UCSAF has built 1,068 using government funding in partnership with service providers, with a total cost of around 161bn/-.
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