Communications in Malawi includes the country's postal, telephone, television, radio and internet services.
Post
Malawi Posts Corporation provides the national postal service in Malawi and runs the post offices throughout the country. Ten other postal services providers operate in Malawi, including DHL, FedEx.[1]
Postal services in Malawi are regulated by the Malawi Communications Regulatory Authority (MACRA).[2][3]
Telephone
Mobile telephones are vastly more common than fixed line phones in Malawi, with over 6.1 million mobile subscriptions compared with only 45,678 fixed line subscriptions As of 2015.[4]
A report by the International Telecommunications Union in 2014 found the average Malawians spend on mobile phones was over 56% of the average monthly earning there. This was the highest proportion of earnings found by the survey.[5]
Telephone system:
- domestic - fair system of open-wire lines, microwave radio relay links, and radiotelephone communications stations
- international - satellite earth stations - 2 Intelsat (1 Indian Ocean and 1 Atlantic Ocean)
Radio and television
Radio and television broadcast services in Malawi are also regulated by the Malawi Communications Regulatory Authority (MACRA).[3]
There are 45 licensed radio broadcast stations, of which 31 are operational:[6] AM 9, FM 5 (plus 15 repeater stations), shortwave 2 (plus a third station held in standby status)) (As of 2016)
Radios: 2.6 million (As of 1997)
There are 20 licensed television broadcast stations, of which 5 are operational (As of 2016).[6]
Internet
The internet in Malawi is regulated by the Malawi Communications Regulatory Authority (MACRA) Business to consumer Internet service providers include Airtel, and Malawi Postal Service.
As of July 2015 there were 1.67 million internet users in Malawi.[4]
The number of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) was 18 (As of 2003). The Country code (Top level domain) is MW.
See also
- Malawi
- Media of Malawi
References
- ^ Chavula, James (22 October 2013). "Courier amid physical address woes". The Nation Online.
- ^ "Welcome to Malawi Communications Regulatory Authority (MACRA)". www.macra.org.mw. MACRA.
- ^ a b "Act No. 41 of 1998" (PDF). Malawi Government Gazette. 30 December 1998.
- ^ a b "Africa: Malawi". The World Factbook. Central Intelligence Agency. Retrieved 24 March 2017.
- ^ Igunza, Emmanuel (20 February 2015). "Malawi's expensive mobile phone habit". BBC News.
- ^ a b "Licenses Issued". www.macra.org.mw. Malawi Communications Regulatory Authority.
External links
This article incorporates public domain material from the CIA World Factbook website https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/.