Earlier this month, the Uganda Communications Commission (UCC) celebrated 10 years of regulating the country's highly competitive ICT sector, garnering reflection from observers and ICT users.

"I think UCC has done an excellent job, given it was working in an environment where there was no dedicated ministry responsible for ICT," said Edward Baliddawa, chairman of the parliamentary committee on ICT.

Now that there is an ICT ministry in place, Baliddawa added, parts of UCC's mandate need to be reviewed in order to bring the sector to the next level.

Vincent Mugaba, an ICT user, praised the UCC for making phone connections more readily available. "However, they have failed us in many ways," he said.

"UCC should put consumers first. In Europe and other parts of the world, regulators are forcing telecoms to put prices down, allow more services on the network at minimal cost and generally give more to consumers," Mugaba said.

"Consumers have been forced to swallow a poor service, paying for dropped calls, undelivered SMS [short message service] and many more woes without UCC coming out to demand a certain level of service delivery," he added.

Another keen watcher of the sector who preferred anonymity said that the UCC's regulatory approach in Africa is one to be proud of.

"I honestly do believe that UCC has done a good job and needs all the glory and praise," he said.

He did, however, agree with Mugaba that the UCC has fared poorly regarding consumer protection.

"Either due to fear, laxity, compromise, sheer incompetence, job neglect or all of these issues combined, very little has been done to help the consumer when faced with problems relating to service providers," he said.

"It is highly unlikely that a petition a consumer sends to UCC for arbitration will receive the attention it deserves," he noted. "It is, therefore, my hope that as UCC relaunches its image and celebrates 10 years, effort is made in attending to the needs and complaints of the ICT consumer."

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.