Universal Service Should Mean Serving People

A phone number used to be just a phone number. Today it is much more. It is how employers contact job seekers, how banks send notifications, how government departments communicate with citizens, and how schools, clinics, businesses and family members find us. For many Namibians, a phone number has become part of their digital identity. That is why the issue of mobile number cancellation deserves more public attention than it receives. Most people understand that telecommunications companies need rules for managing inactive numbers. Number ranges are finite and networks must be managed efficiently. The problem arises when efficiency becomes more important than the people the system is supposed to serve.

Consider a pensioner who buys airtime only when money is available, an unemployed person who may go months without recharging a phone, or a seasonal worker whose income fluctuates throughout the year. When an inactive number is eventually cancelled and recycled, the consequences can be significant. Potential employers lose contact with job seekers. Banks lose a communication channel with their customers. Government departments lose a way of reaching citizens. Family members lose a trusted point of contact. What appears to be a simple administrative process can have real human consequences. A mobile number is an address for opportunity. Increasingly, it is how people participate in the modern economy and society. We would never accept a citizen losing their national identity because they had not used it often enough. Yet we have become comfortable with people losing their digital identities through which modern society increasingly communicates with them. The irony is that Namibia’s telecommunications laws are built on the principle that access to communication is a…