Communications in Malawi includes the country's postal, telephone, television, radio and internet services.
Post
Malawi Posts Corporation
Malawi Posts Corporation (MPC) is the statutory corporation responsible for the postal service and some financial services in Malawi.
Services
MPC runs 180 post offices throughout Malawi, and also provides services via 154 postal agencies. ...
provides the national postal service in Malawi and runs the
post office
A post office is a public facility and a retailer that provides mail services, such as accepting letters and parcels, providing post office boxes, and selling postage stamps, packaging, and stationery. Post offices may offer additional serv ...
s throughout the country. Ten other postal services providers operate in Malawi, including DHL, FedEx.
Postal services in Malawi are regulated by the
Malawi Communications Regulatory Authority The Malawi Communications Regulatory Authority (MACRA) is the communications regulatory authority in Malawi. It was established as an independent regulatory organization in 1998 as part of the Communications Act. It oversees Malawi's Telecommunicati ...
(MACRA).
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 .
A report by the
International Telecommunication Union
The International Telecommunication Union is a specialized agency of the United Nations responsible for many matters related to information and communication technologies. It was established on 17 May 1865 as the International Telegraph Unio ...
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.
Telephone system:
* domestic - fair system of open-wire lines, microwave radio relay links, and radiotelephone communications stations
* international -
satellite earth station
A ground station, Earth station, or Earth terminal is a terrestrial radio station designed for extraplanetary telecommunication with spacecraft (constituting part of the ground segment of the spacecraft system), or reception of radio waves fro ...
s - 2
Intelsat
Intelsat S.A. (formerly INTEL-SAT, INTELSAT, Intelsat) is a multinational satellite services provider with corporate headquarters in Luxembourg and administrative headquarters in Tysons Corner, Virginia, United States. Originally formed as In ...
(1
Indian Ocean
The Indian Ocean is the third-largest of the world's five oceanic divisions, covering or ~19.8% of the water on Earth's surface. It is bounded by Asia to the north, Africa to the west and Australia to the east. To the south it is bounded by th ...
and 1
Atlantic Ocean
The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's five oceans, with an area of about . It covers approximately 20% of Earth's surface and about 29% of its water surface area. It is known to separate the " Old World" of Africa, Europe ...
)
Radio and television
Radio and television broadcast services in Malawi are also regulated by the Malawi Communications Regulatory Authority (MACRA).
There are 45 licensed radio broadcast stations, of which 31 are operational:
AM 9,
FM 5 (plus 15 repeater stations),
shortwave
Shortwave radio is radio transmission using shortwave (SW) radio frequencies. There is no official definition of the band, but the range always includes all of the high frequency band (HF), which extends from 3 to 30 MHz (100 to 10 me ...
2 (plus a third station held in standby status)) ()
Radios: 2.6 million ()
There are 20 licensed television broadcast stations, of which 5 are operational ().
Internet
The internet in Malawi is regulated by the Malawi Communications Regulatory Authority (MACRA) Business to consumer Internet service providers include
Airtel
Bharti Airtel Limited, commonly known as (d/b/a) Airtel, is an Indian multinational telecommunications services company based in New Delhi. It operates in 18 countries across South Asia and Africa, as well as the Channel Islands. Currently, ...
, and
Malawi Postal Service.
there were 1.67 million internet users in Malawi.
The number of
Internet Service Provider
An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides services for accessing, using, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non-profit, or otherwise private ...
s (ISPs) was 18 (). The
Country code
Country codes are short alphabetic or numeric geographical codes (geocodes) developed to represent countries and dependent areas, for use in data processing and communications. Several different systems have been developed to do this. The term '' ...
(Top level domain) is
MW.
See also
*
Malawi
Malawi (; or aláwi Tumbuka: ''Malaŵi''), officially the Republic of Malawi, is a landlocked country in Southeastern Africa that was formerly known as Nyasaland. It is bordered by Zambia to the west, Tanzania to the north and northeast ...
*
Media of Malawi
References
External links
GSM World page on MalawiPanAfriL10n page on Malawi
Internet in Malawi
{{Malawi-stub