Togo and Benin signed an agreement on March 25, 2021, in the context of Article 6 of the Radiocommunications Regulations and Recommendation ITU-R SM 1049-1, dealing respectively with the coordination and the management method of the spectrum to be used to facilitate the process of assigning frequencies to the terrestrial service in border areas. In this context, the electronic communications and postal regulatory authorities of the two countries held, from August 2 to 5, 2022 in Lomé, a meeting to coordinate and share radio frequencies at the borders between Togo and Benin. For four days, the regulatory authorities and telephone operators of the two countries reviewed the content of this agreement and made recommendations in the direction of ensuring better mobile telephone services for the benefit of consumers who complain of network interference. and accidental roaming.
Two objectives underpinned the organization of this meeting of electronic communications and postal regulators and telephone operators from Togo and Benin, in Lomé. This involves updating the radio frequency coordination and sharing agreement for terrestrial services signed on March 25, 2021 between the two neighboring countries, but also to assess the performance of the solution. put in place by the operators to overcome the problem of accidental roaming, of which the populations are victims at the level of their borders. Thus, for four days, the participants worked on ways to facilitate the use of frequencies at the borders of the two countries, in particular the limitation of the penetration of signals from neighboring networks into the coordination zone and on the means of combating Accidental roaming at borders.
Strong conclusions to ensure better mobile telephony services
The work led to several conclusions. Indeed, major changes have been made to the coordination agreement signed in 2021. They relate, among other things, to a new distribution of channels in the 900 MHz and 1800 MHz frequency bands for the GSM and DCS service at the borders. between the two countries, to the downward revision of the penetration distances and the tolerable power level in the whole of the coordination zone called “LNG ZONE”, strip of the west coast of Benin for GSM, DCS, UMTS services and LTE. There is also talk of defining new provisions in the agreement, to allow operators to benefit from the support of regulators with a view to organizing self-monitoring missions in neighboring countries, in order to ensure the compliance of their facilities to the provisions of the coordination agreement. The other point of satisfaction resulting from the exchanges is knowing that all the operators have already implemented, for several years, a professional tool for the automated management of accidental roaming incidents.
The director of radio frequencies at ARCEP-Togo, Mr. Awandi Modena
Putting an end to these meetings on behalf of the Director General of the Regulatory Authority for Electronic Communications and Posts (ARCEP-Togo), Mr. Kossivi Dokoué, praised the quality of the work. He expressed the wish that this active participation of the operators foreshadows that measures will be taken to respect the parameters that we have set ourselves to limit the signals below the threshold values at the penetration distance and respect the preferential channels in the coordination zone. If we have set ourselves these conditions, it is because we believe that they are technically feasible. We hope to have concrete results in the coming months and at the next coordination meeting. “. Finally, he urged the operators to keep the data of the cells located at the borders up to date and to do everything possible to ensure the proper functioning of their respective platforms used to combat accidental roaming. ” ARCEP-Togo undertakes to implement the necessary means to ensure that operators in Togo comply with the parameters set out in the coordination agreement “Given the current security context, suggested Mr. Dokoué.
The representative of ARCEP-Benin, Mr. Yetondji Houeyetongnon delivering the conclusions of the meeting to the press.
Implement the various conclusions from the Lomé meeting
For the chairman of the coordination meeting, Mr. Modena Awandi, director of radio frequencies at ARCEP-Togo, “ it is imperative that the support of us regulators in this dynamic of rigorous monitoring be reinforced. The challenge is to succeed in implementing in our respective countries the various conclusions resulting from these meetings in Lomé, in order to best meet the expectations of users of electronic communications services who are becoming increasingly demanding on the quality of services provided by operators ».
For his part, the Director of Authorizations and Radiocommunications of ARCEP-Benin, Mr. Yétondji Houeyetongnon, explained that accidental roaming is the fact that a subscriber from Togo who finds himself, for example, at the border still being on Togolese territory, switches to the network of an operator in Benin or vice versa. He indicated that this agreement allowing a better comfort of use of electronic communication services in the border areas between Togo and Benin has been revised periodically since it was signed. And we can say that with everything we have stopped today, we can hope that in the days to come, people living in border areas will benefit from services with much more improved comfort than before “said Mr. Houeyetongnon.
Apart from the Regulatory Authorities (ARCEP-Togo) and (ARCEP-Benin), the mobile telephone operators of the two countries in particular, MTN Benin, Moov Africa Benin, SBIN, Togocel and Moov Africa Togo participated in these meetings.
Blandine TAGBA-ABAKI