| The African Telecommunications Union has put together a set of guidelines to assist in combating the Coronavirus virus pandemic. Heads of states and governments across the continent are taking no chances as they race to stop the spread of the virus by informing their citizens about the pandemic and the various ways to combat the disease. Globally, telecoms/ICTs have become a pillar in the prevention and response to the Covid-19 pandemic. The ATU, a specialised agency of the African Union in the field of telecommunications, through the Secretary-General, John Omo, is urging the Ministries of ICT, through the telecommunications regulators and operators in the member states, to consider implement recommendations/guidelines to fight COVID-19. Some of the guidelines include: implement the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) to enable authorities to effectively prevent and mitigate the spread of Covid-19; reserve some dedicated network capacity which should be made available free of charge to the authorities handling Covid-19; calls to emergency numbers should be free; radio amateurs, who are community based, should be involved in the information dissemination mitigation processes for Covid-19 and regulators should also streamline the process to allow telecom/ICT services to be available as soon as possible by granting telecom/ICT service licenses necessary to support emergency telecom/ICT efforts. |
African Telecommunications Union calls for harmonised action to combat pandemic
