HAT : contolling international communications as well as getting a watchdog

Madagascar´s 3 main telecommunication companies exploiting the internet and cell phone communication market have jointly condemned the state led attempt to impose a certain trade monopoly. Granting the control of all international lines to one company is actually a way to get a grip on everything. The action is, technically speaking, completely off the point, now that each private company has its own fiber optic link to the international backbone.

The partly state owned TELMA company was basically supposed to provide the gateway to the outside world through its EASSY cable, as well as its own national network to home based operators. This model is now history, competition has altered the game. The other couple of investers have their own international gateways and national networks. The HAT is consequently keen on creating an artificial new service, merely dedicated to collecting a new artificial tax for the operators, and subsequently for consumers. The whole plan pledges a “partner country”´s commercial interests.

The HAT prime minister currently in charge of the telecommunication ministry confessed his thorough lack or technical capabilities. General Vital is proving this when enforcing a very much biased poltical decision at the national economy´s expenses. He is literally sending the small  Malagasy telecommunication sector back to the Middle Ages, as this grip over lines might soon be capitalized in a control over contents as well. The HAT´incentives are not missing although its completely failed online propaganda and its very negative online avatar are not the real causes for the denial of international recognition.

The information technology trading companies are firmly standing against the denounced HAT´s will to force them to use a single gateway to the outside world placed under its full control: “Imposing a watchdog on international up and downstream flows, be it a private society, would come up to grant a monopoly to the government and upset free competition, the very bases of liberal markets”

The HAT is once again trying to put up a fictional terrorist threat or an alleged international plot against its rule as an excuse to get its grip on international communication: “such a system would be paving the way for deviations dimmed to violate the very citizen´s intimity right” warned the operators. TELMA, AIRTEL, and ORANGE are now joining forces to defend the sector and the consumers´ common interest. They are appearing deternined to resort to every possible judicial tool against the law project. But the HAT is now the one drafting laws, even those it is violating