Napoleon Adok Gai, the Director General of the National Communication Authority - Courtesy

The National Communication Authority has come up with penalties against Telcom companies discriminating against non-subscribers from accessing mobile money services on their respective networks, according to the Director General.

“We are imposing inter-operability as a condition of mobile money.  Many of them are just starting, and we are hoping to give them a leeway to stabilize before we go after them, ” said Napoleon Adok, NCA’s Director General.

Napoleon Adol says the practice is a violation of the terms and conditions of mobile money platforms that dictate interoperability between mobile money service providers.

“Mobile Money is a shared regulation between the Telcom regulator and the Money regulator which is the central bank. The terms of the mobile money platform are interoperability, and mobile users should be able to send money to each other,” he said.

According to Adok, the Communication Authority has allowed each mobile money to have what he calls a USSD code that enables users to dial and access money through their phones of any kind.

He says the code is very important because it enables everybody to access money in disregard of what network they have.

“That is a code you dial on your phone, doesn’t matter which kind of phone, you should be able to access your wallet,” he said.

He says the Communication Authority and the Bank of South Sudan have recently met and will soon impose the implementation.

“We have just completed a meeting with the central bank, and we have come up with very good penalties. So, I’m going to try it by myself, if anybody is unable to send money to another mobile, we will consider as discrimination,”

Adok hopes that the Telcom companies will adhere to the policy and implement it before the institutions go after them.

“Hopefully they will be able to implement that when we meet again,” he warns.

The move according to Engineer Napoleon, is to ensure the latest technology is usable and accessible by our people.

“We have emphasized that the latest technology must be reliable, and affordable to our people. We want to ensure availability, connectivity and interoperability.”