Malawi and Zambia have committed to an memorandum of understanding established to address issues of cross-border spill-over of telecommunications and broadcasting frequencies.
The MoU, signed by the Zambia Information and Communications Technology Authority (ZICTA) and the Malawi Communications and Regulatory Authority (Macra), also covers the expansion of roaming agreements to telecom operators in both countries, as well as public land mobile systems, fixed wireless access systems and radio communication.
ZICTA acting director general Patrick Mutimushi said both countries are active members of Communications Regulators Association of Southern Africa, Southern African Development Community and the African Telecommunications Unions hence the need to co-operate on cross-border frequency spillover and the expansion of roaming agreements.
“The signing of the MoU is historic because it launches increased collaboration between the two countries and organisations in promoting telecommunications and broadcasting services cross-border frequency co-ordination,” Mutimushi said.
Currently, only MTN Zambia and the Zambia Telecommunications Company have roaming agreements with Telekom Networks Malawi (TNM) out of the three mobile phone operators in Malawi, while Airtel Malawi only roams with its sister company Airtel Zambia out of three operators in Zambia.
Malawians have previously complained about cross-border spill-over of communication and broadcasting frequencies from Zambia which interferes with Malawi’s broadcasting and communication networks.
Macra Director General Godfrey Itaye said Malawi will continue to work with ZICTA for the betterment of the two countries.