By the end of last June Malta had 550,000 mobile phone accounts, with the population making around 1.7 million phone calls a day, Parliamentary Secretary Edward Zammit Lewis told Parliament.
He was introducing amendments to three acts – the Communications Authority Act, the Postal Services Act and the Electronic Communications (Regulation) Act.
Moreover, 79 per cent of Maltese homes had broadband coverage – three per cent higher than the European median, he said.
Dr Zammit Lewis quoted National Statistics Office figures which showed that the information technology industry, which features in a majority of other sectors such as education, health and financial services, contributed to 36 per cent of the GDP.
He announced that the new national digital policy would soon be introduced.
Two amendments were being proposed to the Postal Services Act, which was anachronistic and applicable at the time the postal services were catered for by a monopoly. The Bill was proposing two different kinds of licences, one for the Universal Service Provider and another for other distributors. Thus, a distinction in the licensing regime was put in place.
The second main amendment was reducing the powers of the Minister.
With regard to amendments proposed to the Communications Authority Act, he said the aim behind these proposals was to make the authority more flexible and better at its internal administration.
Therefore, anything which was a dead letter in the law relating to collaboration with the Attorney General’s office and other consultative committees was being removed.
Moreover, the Act was making clearer the role of the authority and its delegation powers.
While the criteria for disqualification from the authority would remain the same – mainly that a person is unfit to continue in office and that a person is incapable to perform his duties – their definition would be set in the law and their application would be clearer.
Currently, the law gives the chairman of the authority the power to ask the minister to inform him in writing why tenure was being terminated. He said this power would be extended to other members of the board for the sake of transparency.
Dr Zammit Lewis said another amendment would gave a clear direction on decisions delivered by the Administrative Review Tribunal contesting the Malta Communications Authority’s (MCA) decisions.
Other amendments concerned electronic communications, where it was made clear that the authority had no jurisdiction on content transmitted electronically. The authority was also being exempted from publishing frequencies assigned to institutions safeguarding national security.