Army says mobile phone companies compromising state security
By Lance Guma
28 November 2006

An army director in charge of signal communications has criticised all three mobile phone companies in Zimbabwe saying their operating licences compromise state security. Colonel Livingstone Chineka made the remarks while giving oral evidence before the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Transport and Communication on the Interception of Communication Bill. He criticised the Postal and Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (POTRAZ) claiming they had used the wrong statute of the law to grant the licences.

The army says the current arrangement inhibits the state from monitoring international calls made through the three networks. Col Chineka said the operators got their licences in accordance with section 34 of the Postal and Telecommunication Act, which deals with fixed telephony, instead of section 31 that deals with mobile service providers. He said section 31 would have required the operators to link their base stations with TelOne for their international gateway in making international calls and that this could have enabled the State to police conversations in the interest of security. Interestingly one of the operators Net One is government owned, just like Tel One, and critics have been quick to point out that its actually Econet and Telecel the army is targeting in their remarks.

Chineka says the mobile phone companies should be given a grace period of one month to align their equipment with TelOne. The army official says he has not yet seen the Interception of Communication Bill, which is at the centre of the hearings in which he is giving evidence. Our correspondent Lionel Saungweme says the appearance of the army at the hearings was at the instigation of the Joint Operations Command (JOC) which groups all security agencies in the country. He reports that the government is trying to build momentum for putting in place laws that will see the crippling of Econet Wireless. The company only managed to get an operating licence in December 1997, following intervention by the Supreme Court.

The High Court this month suspended a law that sought to force Econet and Telecel to route their international traffic through Tel One. This will enable them to challenge the constitutionality of the law in the Supreme Court. The private cellphone companies argue that the new measures are meant to subsidise the loss making parastatal Tel One.