By Ayi Renaud Dossavi

The Francophone Telecommunications Regulation Network (FRATEL) will hold its 21st seminar on 21-22 May 2024. The event will be hosted in Lomé, Togo, by the Togolese telecom watchdog, ARCEP Togo. The theme of the seminar is “Data economy and digital services: what are the technical-economic regulatory issues ?”

“Members of the Network (Fratel, ed. note) will exchange on the technical-economic regulation challenges of the use of non-personal data from the public and corporate sectors, potential data storage market failures and public interventions to remedy them, as well as regulatory measures for fostering emergence and development of digital services, especially mobile payments,” the Fratel Network noted.

The meeting should shed light on the Togolese regulator whose operations are grounded in the collection and analysis of data. In this regard, the regulator’s QoS center, set up in 2021, allowed it to better monitor local and regional trends and call out local operators for breaches in their contracts. Among others, the ARCEP’s warnings recently led to the lowering of prices in Togo, for calls, mobile data, and fiber optic services.

The FRATEL was officially established in 2003 in Bamako, Mali. It regroups French-speaking telecommunications regulators. The group was launched at a symposium of French-speaking regulators in Paris in 2002.