Roke Telkom summoned over equipment row with UTL
Mr Samuel Wasswa, a Uganda telecom optical fibre technician shows a point where their fibre wires were illegally connected to those of Roke Telkom in Namuwongo, Kampala on Monday. PHOTO BY MICHAEL KAKUMIRIZI
What you need to know:
Destruction. Uganda telecom has involved police to protect its infrastructure from being vandalised.
KAMPALA. The Criminal Investigations Directorate (CID) has issued an appearance notice to the managing director of Roke Telkom following accusations of illegally using Uganda Telecom (UTL) optic fibre cables.
When contacted, Roke Telkom managing director Roger Sekaziga denied the claims, saying the allegations being levelled against his company come from a misunderstanding which they have nothing to do with.
According to the notice, Mr Sekaziga is expected to appear at the CID headquarters today (Wednesday) at 10am to provide relevant information regarding the matter under inquiry—illegal use of UTL optic fibre cables.
“The Directorate is conducting investigations into allegations that your company without authorisation used UTL optic fibre cables at various locations in the country,” reads the letter dated August 18, 2017.
Investigations into the allegation are being handled by the fraud and anti-corruption department at CID headquarters in Kibuli.
Vandalism
A report by UTL which the Daily Monitor has seen indicates that one of its biggest challenges is maintaining its infrastructure which is being vandalised by competition.
“UTL cables have been repeatedly vandalized, stolen and in some cases there has been outright sabotage perpetuated by the competition,” read the report.
The document further reads: “In a bid to mitigate this, Uganda Telecom’s management requested Uganda Police Force (UPF) to help in protection of its infrastructure and arrest all people who are carrying out cable vandalism, sabotage and theft of its infrastructure.”
During the police investigation, it was unearthed that Roke Telkom Limited, a competitor of Uganda Telecom in providing telecom solutions, used UTL stolen fibre cables to set its network infrastructure, an allegation that the accused has dismissed.
The police, together with UTL engineers, found that Roke Telkom Limited used Uganda Telecom’s 24Core armoured fibre cable to connect its customers in Makindye division and International Hospital Kampala (IHK) among others places.
For that, UTL now wants a forensic investigation on Roke network infrastructure to determine how much of Uganda Telecom cables are being used by the company
Roke Telkom responds to claims
According to a press release issued on Monday, a Chinese firm in a letter quoted in the press statement, acknowledged supplying the fibre cables in question, stressing that it did so under legally accepted commercial motivation.
“This letter is to confirm that on 15th March 2012, Roke Telkom issued a Purchase Order WFIT/o10312/o1 to Wuhan Fiber Home International Technologies Limited for fibre optic cable supply.
This letter further confirms that Wuhan Fiber Home International Technologies supplied the fibre cable in question,” reads the letter quoted in the statement.
The statement showed that the cable in question was supplied from stock held by Wuhan Fiber Home International Technologies in its Kampala warehouse.
During this period, Wuhan Fiber Home International Technologies received an order from Roke Telkom Limited.
“However, when Uganda Telecom Limited failed to complete its payments on the terms agreed upon, Wuhan FiberHome International Technologies approached Roke Telkom in March 2012, to take fibre optical cable it had in stock instead of waiting for its own order that was yet to be delivered to Kampala,” reads the statement.
The statement continued to read: “We confirm that fibre cable although labelled Uganda Telecom Limited was eventually sold by Wuhan Fiber Home International Technologies to Roke Telkom limited under Invoice FF12oo1 dated 14/3/2012 which was issued to Roke Telkom.”
The statement stressed that the letters quoted in the statement confirms that the fibre cable in question was not the property of UTL but rather, the property of Wuhan Fiber Home International Technologies who reserved the right to sell off the said fibre cable.
“Wuhan Fiber Home International Technologies hereby states and confirms that it rightfully supplied fiber cable to Roke Telkom based on a commercial agreement,” the letter quoted in the statement concludes.
KEY tit bits
UTL takeover. Uganda Telecom (UTL) operations were taken over by Government in March 2017 after the majority shareholders, the Libyan African Portfolio (LAP), pulled out
Operations. UTL went into administration in May 2017, since then, there has been tremendous improvement in UTLs operations.
Roke Telkom. Roke Telkom has been fully licensed since 2006 by the Uganda Communications Commission (UCC) as a Public Service Provider (capacity Resale, Voice & Data) and Public Infrastructure Provider.
