STATE OF THE MEDIA IN ZAMBIA Southern Province is experiencing an internet blackout on all three mobile service networks. ZICTA Consumer Protection manager Edgar Mulawuzi has confirmed this in an interview with News Diggers. Mulawuzi said the service providers have already notified the authority and that engineers are on the ground trying to establish the fault. “It’s a network outage. Yes, we received some reports from the service providers. Right now the service providers are working to rectify the technical fault which they have identified. They have not told us what the fault is but what we know is that it’s affecting data services because voice they have. And when you look at the consumer protection guidelines, service providers are supposed to notify the authority about any network outages. Then Section 19.4 of our Consumer Protection guidelines says that service providers are supposed to respond to us and to tell us once the technical fault or outage has been resolved,” Mulawuzi said. He said the particular outage in Southern Province was normal and was not the first one. “And these outages normally happen in the rainy season. Remember last time in December before Christmas, there was one I think in Lusaka and about two weeks ago there was one I think in Eastern Province. There are normally a lot of faults especially because of the weather. We will give a proper response once the service providers give us the report. But it’s something the mobile service providers are aware of and their engineers are on the ground to look at what the fault is about,” said Mulawuzi. On a positive note, new technology was noted with the launch of Airtel TV, an Internet Protocol TV (IPTV) application that enables users to have access to media content and news on the go. The service brings over thirty (30) live channels and over 800 videos on demand with the number expected to pg. 42