Tanzania Communication Regulatory Authority

Type:	Private
Founded:	2003
Headquarters:	Dar Es Salaam
Country:	Tanzania
Website:	tcra.go.tz
Facebook:	TCRA Facebook
Key People
Judge Buxton Chipeta, Chairman Dr. Vuai Iddi Lila, Vice Chairman Professor John S. Nkoma, Director General, Board Member [[[ Baruany Elijah Luhanga]], Board Member Dr. Justinian Anatory, Board Member Goodluck Joseph Ole-Medeye, Dir. Corporate Resources Management James Kilaba - Deputy Director

TCRA or Tanzania Communication Regulatory Authority is an organisation within the Republic of Tanzania that deals with postal service, broadcasting, and electronic communications issues.

The TCRA came into existence on November 1, 2003 with the help of both the Tanzania Communication Commission and Tanzania Broadcasting. It is headquartered in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania. It is set up with the terms of TCRA Act No 12. The aim of the company is to improve the means of communication within the republic. The organisation is regulated by the government of Tanzania and answers to the Communication and Technology Ministry.

Its deputy director, James Kilaba, represents the country of Tanzania in ICANN's GAC.

Functions

A few of the functions performed by the TCRA are:

• Keep the interest of the clients intact
• Provide low cost services to low-income clients.
• Issue licenses to those companies that qualify for them.
• Cancel the license of a company that violates the terms.
• Keep tariff of various services in check and prevent them from rising.
• Take care of the activities that the Tanzania Communications Commission and Tanzania Broadcasting Commission were involved in.

Other Activities

The organisation is involved in various other activities other than developing communication systems in the country. For instance, they also focus on education, and they have ties to various education suppliers, government agencies, colleges and universities.

TCRA and ICANN

The ccTLD for the United Republic of Tanzania is .tz. It was originally delegated to Prof. Beda Mutagahwa of the Univeristy of Dar es Salaam and his colleagues in 1995. Given that there was no Internet access in the country at that time, the technical operations were internationally contracted.

In 2005, The TCRA formed a national coalition of ISPs, network operators, and representatives of the University. They were further aided by technical experts from neighboring countries. Later that year, the TCRA assumed control of the .tz domain space. A year later an internal report recommended that a non-profit limited company be established, with the sole purpose to “control, manage and operate” the .tz domain. Thus, in 2006 the Tanzania Network Information Centre Limited, "TZNIC", was incorporated. Membership within the group is restricted to individuals involved with either the TCRA or the Tanzania Internet Service Providers Association (TISPA).

On August 10th, 2009, TZNIC announced that they had transfered authority over the .tz domain space from the University to themselves. The transfer was technically unlawful as ICANN had yet to approve the transfer of the ccTLD. 3 months later, in October, they submitted to ICANN a formal application for the transfer.

Facts

The United Republic of Tanzania uses the TZ ISO 3166-1 code. The country is in eastern part of Africa, and the population of the country stands ate nearly 41 million.

History

In the year 1993, Tanzania was represented by Bill Sangiwa, Kitalima Babula and Prof. Beda Mutagahwa in the International Internet Conferences. They discussed the delegation of .TZ domain. The request was made in 1995. All the work was done outside Tanzania, as the Internet was not introduced in the country at that time.

In the year 2005, the Tanzania Communication Regulatory Authority (TCRA) formed a National Committee. The members of the committee included Network operators, ISPs, University representatives. A technical group was also formed to support the committee. The utilization of the domain was analyzed and experiences of some model countries like China, Brazil, South Africa and Kenya were also considered.

In the same year, Telecommunication Numbering and Electronic Address Regulations were made and according to this the responsibility of maintaining the electronic numbers and addresses was given to TCRA.

In 2006, TCRA came with idea of setting up of an organization, which would look after the .TZ domain. TCRA believed that it was good that the country had an entity which represented the whole of Internet community of Tanzania. According to the findings of TCRA, Tanzania Internet Service Providers Association (TISPA) came into existence.

Tanzania Network Information Centre Limited was set up to fulfill the recommendations of TCRA.

In 2009, the .TZ management was transferred from Dar Es Salaam University to TZNIC. This transfer was not an authorized one, because the ICANN had not approved it through the re-delegation procedure.

The technical contact for the .TZ domain was Randy Bush and TZNIC wrote to him about the request to re-delegate the domain. In the request it was stated that the name server of the domain which happened to be rip.psg.com and sunic.sunet.se, remained authoritative after re-delegation of the domain.

On 23rd October, a request was submitted to the ICANN by TZNIC.

On 23 October 2009, TZNIC submitted a request to ICANN for re-delegation of the .TZ domain.

The members of TZNIC are TCRA and TISPA, and the endorsement of the request has been by these two only. The sponsoring foundation was also founded by TCRA. The point of contact for the re-delegation request is TCRA.

International Standards Organization