The Uganda Communications Commission (UCC) is set to monitor Internet bandwidth in the country as it attempts to better regulate the communications market in an effort to curb costs for users.
Currently, there is no mechanism to establish whether the bandwidth ISPs (Internet service providers) offer Internet users, including the UCC itself, is actually the 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," said Isaac Kalembe, the media and public relations specialist at UCC. The UCC, however, declined to give details about the technology it will use to monitor bandwidth.
A lack of proper regulation of ISP's activities has raised concern among Internet users over the years. Users have always complained that the UCC does not have a way of regulating the Internet, especially the efficiency of ISPs in respect to the services they offer users.
Attempts to monitor the Internet are more urgent than ever, considering that despite the shift away from satellite connectivity by many ISPs to SEACOM's fiber-optic cable, users said they have not experienced a difference in the speed of 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 realize the bandwidth speeds that were promised," said an official attached to a regional office of one of the leading computer software companies.
She said her company had not noted any difference in speed since the ISP they are subscribed to announced they had connected to SEACOM.
Teopista Aboa, the IT officer at the Uganda National Bureau of Standards (UNBS), said the standards body had not experienced any change in bandwidth despite being told that they had been connected to the undersea fiber-optic cable.
Venansius Baryamureeba, dean of the faculty of Computing and IT at Makerere University, said there is need for regulation because the lay person cannot establish whether they are being cheated or not -- users 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, users can still use service level agreements 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.
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