There are a number of systems of communication in Uganda, including a system of telephony, radio and television broadcasts, internet, mail, and several newspapers. The use of phones and the internet in

Uganda Uganda, officially the Republic of Uganda, is a landlocked country in East Africa. It is bordered to the east by Kenya, to the north by South Sudan, to the west by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to the south-west by Rwanda, and to the ...

has rapidly increased in the last few years.

History

1900–1970

The postal service of for the protectorates of British East Africa and Uganda was called East Africa and Uganda Protectorates, and operated from 1 April 1903, to 22 July 1920. From 1948 to 1977, postal service in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda was provided by the East African Posts and Telecommunications Corporation. With the

decolonization of Africa The decolonisation of Africa was a series of political developments in Africa that spanned from the mid-1950s to 1975, during the Cold War. Colonial governments gave way to sovereign states in a process often marred by violence, political turm ...

, Uganda took over control of its postal system, although until 1961 stamps from the colonial postal system were being issued alongside Uganda's stamps.

1990s–present

The Uganda Posts and Telecommunications Corporation had a monopoly over Uganda's communications sector until the Uganda Communications Act was enacted in 1997. The act created the Uganda Communications Commission, the current regulator of communications in Uganda.Kyeyune, H. (21 May 2004). ''CASE STUDY: UGANDA'' (Abdus Salam International Center for Theoretical Physics Radiocommunications Unit New Radiocommunication Technologies for Information and Communication Technologies in Developing African Countries).

Telephone

, the telephone communications system was described by the CIA factbook as "developed through private partnerships", with "over of fiber optics", and 4G network available in most major cities and national parks, and 3G service available in second-tier urban centers. , Uganda Telecom Limited (UTL), Celtel and MTN Uganda Limited were the three telecommunications operators licensed by the Uganda Communications Commission. In 2018 there were 368,243 main telephone lines in use in

, making Uganda 108th in the world. In 2016, there were 23 million mobile telephones in use; 54th in the world. This was an increase from 2006 when there were 108,600 main telephone lines in use in Uganda, and from 2007 when there were 4.195 million mobile telephones in use. By June 2018, the total number of mobile telephone users in Uganda, was 23.6 million, or 57.6% of the 41 million population, according to the Uganda Communications Commission. telephone traffic within is carried by wire. Microwave ''radi relay'', and radiotelephone communication stations are used in domestic telecommunications as well, and fixed and mobile cellular systems are used for short range traffic. international telephone communication is catered for by an

Intelsat Intelsat S.A. (formerly Intel-Sat, Intelsat) is a Luxembourgish-American multinational satellite services provider with corporate headquarters in Luxembourg and administrative headquarters in Tysons, Virginia, United States. Originally formed ...

and an

Inmarsat Inmarsat is a British communications satellite, satellite telecommunications company, offering global mobile services. It provides telephone and data services to users worldwide, via portable or mobile terminals which communicate with groun ...

satellite earth station A ground station, Earth station, or Earth terminal is a terrestrial radio station designed for extraplanetary telecommunication with spacecraft (constituting part of the ground segment of the spacecraft system), or reception of radio waves fro ...

, along with

analog Analog or analogue may refer to: Computing and electronics * Analog signal, in which information is encoded in a continuous variable ** Analog device, an apparatus that operates on analog signals *** Analog electronics, circuits which use analog ...

links to

Kenya Kenya, officially the Republic of Kenya, is a country located in East Africa. With an estimated population of more than 52.4 million as of mid-2024, Kenya is the 27th-most-populous country in the world and the 7th most populous in Africa. ...

and

Tanzania Tanzania, officially the United Republic of Tanzania, is a country in East Africa within the African Great Lakes region. It is bordered by Uganda to the northwest; Kenya to the northeast; the Indian Ocean to the east; Mozambique and Malawi to t ...

. The international calling code is 256.

Internet

The

top-level domain A top-level domain (TLD) is one of the domain name, domains at the highest level in the hierarchical Domain Name System of the Internet after the root domain. The top-level domain names are installed in the DNS root zone, root zone of the nam ...

for Uganda is " .ug". In 2018 Uganda had 18.149 million Internet users, or 45.9% of the population (52nd in the world). This is up from 2.5 million users in 2008 (64th in the world). In 2012, Uganda had 36,332 fixed broadband subscriptions (119th in the world) or 0.1% of the population (165th in the world)"Fixed (wired)-broadband subscriptions per 100 inhabitants 2012"
, Dynamic Report, ITU ITC EYE,

International Telecommunication Union The International Telecommunication Union (ITU)In the other common languages of the ITU: * * is a list of specialized agencies of the United Nations, specialized agency of the United Nations responsible for many matters related to information ...

. Retrieved on 29 June 2013. and 2.5 million wireless broadband subscriptions (58th in the world) or 7.6% of the population (99th in the world)."Active mobile-broadband subscriptions per 100 inhabitants 2012"
, Dynamic Report, ITU ITC EYE,

. Retrieved on 29 June 2013. The first high speed commercial internet service in Uganda (and Africa) was constructed by international satellite internet backbone provider NSN Network Services of Avon, CO and its Ugandan ISP client, Infomail Uganda Ltd. This service was switched online on the morning of 5 August 1995. Infomail was linked by satellite from Kampala to NSN's United States east-coast satellite gateway at the USEI teleport in New Jersey and from there linked by a leased terrestrial connection to NSN's satellite gateway and peering routers which were co-located at the Giga-ring at MAE-WEST, at NASA's jet propulsion laboratory in California. The actual satellite linking the two continents was leased by NSN from the Russian Space Communications Corporation (RSCC), a C-Band satellite in geostationary orbit over the mid-Atlantic Ocean. Infomail Uganda began operations with 16 customer dial up lines served by 16 USR 19,200 baud rack mounted modems. A Sun Sparc "Pizzabox" Server on-site in Kampala managed all local internet services and user accounting. The original satellite link in Kampala used a 5-meter Andrew antenna. The initial link speed was 64 kbit/s, almost immediately upgraded to 1.5 Mbit/s in January 2006 when the RF amplifiers in Kampala were upgraded from 5 Watts to 20 Watts. Infomail Uganda Ltd was founded and managed by Dr. Jean Paul Minet in partnership with Kampala radio broadcaster Patrick Quarcoo (Capital FM) and William Pike, editor/publisher of The Nation newspaper. The backbone satellite system was designed and assembled / installed in Kampala by NSN's VP of Engineering Bill Sepmeier, NSN co-founder and engineer John Morris, and local Kampala engineer Terah Kagwah. NSN was sold in 1997 to JACOR/Clear Channel Communications and its remaining network operations in Denver were acquired by LinkUp Communications in 2021. By the end of 2006 Uganda had 18

Internet service provider An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides a myriad of services related to accessing, using, managing, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, no ...

s. Mobile network operators provide internet services to Ugandans alongside fixed-line internet providers. MTN was the first mobile operator to offer Internet services in Uganda via GPRS, but Orange (France Telecom) was the first to popularize mobile Internet by offering 3G services after joining the market in 2009. Orange eventually divested from many anglophone markets in Africa, and their Uganda operating company was purchased by Africell Uganda in 2014. MTN later deployed 3G mobile internet services following decreasing revenues in traditional voice and SMS services. Warid, Zain, UTL, and others later followed suit. Vodafone later entered the market as Uganda's first MVNO. Fixed-line internet providers have also increased in Uganda. These mainly offer premium dedicated internet services to business customers. Some of the notable ISPs for business include Echotel Uganda formerly iWayAfrica, Roke Telkom, Datanet, Liquid Telecom, Simbanet, Gilat, BCS Uganda, C-Squared Uganda, Seacom UG, among others and this infrastructure is complimented with an exchange point UIXP and a carrier neutral Datacentre Raxio Uganda. These offer high speed internet services for enterprise services with speeds ranging from 0.5 Mbit/s to 10 Gbit/s offering 4G Satellite, LTE, Wimax, Microwave, Fibre connectivity solutions. In December 2015 Google launched its first wi-fi network in Kampala.

Internet censorship and surveillance

In September 2009 the

OpenNet Initiative The OpenNet Initiative (ONI) was a joint project whose goal was to monitor and report on internet filtering and surveillance practices by nations. Started in 2002, the project employed a number of technical means, as well as an international netwo ...

found little or no evidence of Internet filtering in all four areas (political, social, conflict/security, and Internet tools) for which it tests. Though Uganda has made great technological strides in recent years, the country still faces a number of challenges in obtaining affordable, reliable Internet bandwidth. This, rather than a formal government-sponsored filtering regime, is the major obstacle to Internet access. Just prior to the presidential elections in February 2006, the Uganda Communications Commission (UCC) blocked the anti-government Web site RadioKatwe in the only internationally reported case of Internet filtering in Uganda to that date. During the 2016 parliamentary elections, the government ordered the blocking of social media for 72 hours (18–21 February). In July 2018 Uganda instituted a tax on "over the top" messaging and voice services, which includes social networks. Users must may a fee of USh (approx

US$ The United States dollar (Currency symbol, symbol: Dollar sign, $; ISO 4217, currency code: USD) is the official currency of the United States and International use of the U.S. dollar, several other countries. The Coinage Act of 1792 introdu ...

0.06) daily to use these services. The stated purpose of the law is to provide additional government revenue, and to control "gossip" being spread over these platforms.

VPN service A virtual private network (VPN) service is a proxy server marketed to help users bypass Internet censorship such as geo-blocking and users who want to protect their communications against data profiling or MitM attacks on hostile networks. ...

s have also been blocked, after they were used by citizens to circumvent the tax.

Amnesty International Amnesty International (also referred to as Amnesty or AI) is an international non-governmental organization focused on human rights, with its headquarters in the United Kingdom. The organization says that it has more than ten million members a ...

condemned the tax as being "a clear attempt to undermine the right to freedom of expression". Internet usage fell significantly after the tax was introduced. In January 2021 the government ordered a complete Internet shutdown during the presidential election, that lasted 4 days.

Postal Service

, Uganda Post Limited was the only postal service licensed by the Uganda Communications Commission in Uganda. , Uganda Post Limited had changed its name to

Posta Uganda Posta Uganda (Luganda for Uganda Post) originally named Uganda Post Limited, is the company solely responsible for mail, postal service in Uganda.

Radio and television

The

Uganda Broadcasting Corporation Uganda Broadcasting Corporation (UBC) is the public broadcaster network of Uganda. It was founded as a result of the "Uganda Broadcasting Corporation Act, 2004", which merged the operations of Uganda Television (UTV) and Radio Uganda. It started ...

is the public broadcasting station. The 2004 Uganda Broadcasting Corporation Act stated that the UBC should be funded by the levying of a

television licence A television licence or broadcast receiving licence is a payment required in many countries for the reception of television broadcasts or the possession of a television set. In some countries, a licence is also required to own a radio or rece ...

fee. Collection of a licence fee set at (around €8.40 or

10.80) started in 2005. However, collection was subsequently halted by President

Yoweri Museveni Yoweri Kaguta Museveni Tibuhaburwa (born 15 September 1944) is a Ugandan politician and Officer (armed forces), military officer who is the ninth and current president of Uganda since 1986. As of 2025, he is the third-List of current state lead ...

. There has since been pressure to reinstate the licence fee to maintain UBC's independence.

Newspapers

Daily newspapers in Uganda include '' The New Vision'', ''Sunday Vision'', '' The Daily Monitor'', ''The Sunday Monitor'', '' The Red Pepper'', ''The Sunday Pepper'', '' The Uganda Observer'', and '' The East African Business Week'' in the Northern Region of Uganda. ''The East African Procurement News'' is a weekly business newspaper.

Blogs in Uganda

Blogs are increasingly being used as a medium of communication in Uganda. Affordable data rates, increasing internet penetration and free blogging platforms such as Wordpress and Blogger are making internet users turn to blogging platforms to creatively express themselves, comment on current affairs, inform the public among other reasons. Blog sites in Uganda include Mbu, Techjaja, Nymy Net, Dignited, Mugibson, and Pulse Uganda.

References

External links

Uganda Communications Commission: A Government Agency

Uganda Communications Commission – June 2008 Index of Radio and TV stations – pdf

GSM World page on Uganda

PanAfriL10n page on Uganda
{{Uganda topics