By Pemphero Malimba:
Member of Parliament for Kasungu North Mike Bango has urged the government to discuss with mobile network operators the issue of improving telecommunications services at the country’s two sports facilities of Bingu National and Kamuzu stadia.
Bango, who is also a sports journalist and football commentator, made the appeal during parliamentary deliberations in Lilongwe on Tuesday.
He said there was poor network connectivity during matches, which he said affected media coverage.
“I have been a journalist for 12 years, doing football commentary. I know what media personnel go through due to weak signals. If you go to these stadia, you will find that there is poor network,” Bango said.
He further said due to poor network at the two facilities, businesspeople and spectators failed to do their transactions properly.
“There is a need to address the problem in conjunction with network providers,” he said.
During the deliberations, several MPs quizzed Minister of Information and Digitalisation Moses Kunkuyu on what the government was doing to improve network connectivity in their respective areas.
Kunkuyu pledged to engage network service providers to address the challenges.
“We will engage the operators further to see how best they can solve the problems,” he said.
He said, normally, network service providers boost network connectivity during football matches.
“It is, indeed, true that we experience some overload when a large crowd has gathered but some boosting efforts are always employed at such times,” he said.
The network connectivity challenges at the two stadia have been hindering media houses, particularly during live football commentary.
In some situations, the problem has been forcing media houses to be using direct phone calls to broadcast live matches.
0 Comments