There has been a 7% growth for OTT subscriptions, according to the latest quarterly trend report by UCC. This increase represents 700,000 cellular users, up from 10.6 million users in March 2020.
This means that during the lockdown period less and less Ugandans relied on using VPNs to accessed OTT services such as Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter and Zoom at least once in the month of June 2020.
Early this year, URA had proposed a new tax on internet bundles. While appearing before the Parliamentary Finance Committee presenting the budget framework paper for the Financial Year 2020/2021, Former URA commissioner general Doris Akol proposed to the committee that the failed OTT tax should instead be imposed on data bundles to avoid tax evasion using VPNs. This doesn’t seem to be the case according to these numbers from UCC.
The loop hole with that proposal was that all data bundles are already being taxed and brings about issues of double taxation just like OTT.
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The OTT Tax seems to be deny all odds, as on July 26th l2019, the former ICT Minister Hon Frank K Tumwebaze came out to unveil certain information in regards to OTT tax and how its removal won’t influence data Prices. He also disclosed that his ministry had been fighting this tax internally with the ministry of finance in vain but also feels that if this tax would be removed it would be good as it would increase the rate of internet penetration in the country.
