Uganda regulator to install bandwidth monitor

The Uganda Communications Commission (UCC) is set to acquire a gadget it will use to measure and monitor internet bandwidth within Uganda as it attempts to regulate this segment of the communications market.
Currently, there is no mechanism of establishing whether the bandwidth Internet Service Providers (ISPs) offer internet users including UCC itself is the actual agreed upon capacity
“We are planning to get equipment that will help us in monitoring the bandwidth. If you agree with the service provider to give you, say, 60 kilobytes there is no mechanism of establishing that it is the actual bandwidth you are getting,” Isaac Kalembe, the media and public relations specialist at UCC said.
A lack of proper regulation of ISP’s activities has raised concern among internet users over the years. Users have always complained that UCC does not have a way of regulating especially the efficiency of ISPs in respect to the services they offer users.
Equipment that measure bandwidth can measure it both as raw capacity and available bandwidth.
From a user’s perspective, with this equipment, UCC will be in position to know how much bandwidth is available to every individual user and will be in position to monitor ISPs better.
This development is ever more urgent considering that despite the shift away from satellite connectivity by a lot of ISPs to SEACOM’s fibre optic cable, users said they have not experienced a difference in the speeds of the connections.
“We have problems with our service provider. We were promised double the bandwidth at the same cost but you find the Internet fluctuating most of the time. We are yet to realise the bandwidth speeds that were promised,” an official attached to a regional office of one of the leading computer software companies said.
She said her company had not noted any difference in speeds since the ISP they are subscribed to announced they had connected to SEACOM.
Teopista Aboa, the IT officer at Uganda National Bureau of Standards (UNBS) said the standards body had not realized any change in speeds despite being told that they had been connected to the undersea optic fibre cable.
Professor Venansius Baryamureeba, dean faculty of Computing and IT, Makerere University said there is need for regulation because the lay person cannot establish whether they are being cheated or not because they do not have the equipment to measure or ascertain whether they are getting their money’s worth.
“If there is no monitoring, your Internet Service Provider might see that you paid for more bandwidth than you actually use and try to divert some of it. There is really need for monitoring,” he said.
Kalembe said that despite a lack of equipment to monitor internet bandwidth, internet users can still use Service Level Agreements (SLAs) to ensure that they are not exploited.
“Some people get connected without signing SLAs or sometimes when they sign them they do not read them properly,” he said adding that the major problem is that most people do not know their rights regarding communication services.
He said signing SLAs would, for instance, help in establishing whether the bandwidth agreed upon will be at the point of entry or reception.
“If this does not happen you need to contact your service provider and if there is no change you can contact UCC for action,” Kalembe said.
He however did not mention who the vendor of this equipment is, how much it will cost and when the equipment will be installed.

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