Rising costs, connectivity outages — a tough year for IT sector

It was a tough year for the IT sector, with telecom operators and users taking the brunt, especially after a change of government in April and the belt-tightening that followed. Call and internet rates jumped and yet the service quality worsened and speeds slowed in 2022. Network outages intensified thanks to ‘connectivity load-shedding’ in the wake of hours-long power outages and rising fuel costs. Among the few silver linings was the cloud-first policy introduced in February that sought to shift federal public service entities away from on-premise infrastructure. However, after hitting that cloud, the ministry asked for the moon when it set a $5 billion export target for IT exports, a figure stakeholders say seems to be anything but achievable. One bright spot in the otherwise gloom-ridden IT landscape was the export of 120,000 mobile phone sets to various markets in the Middle East and Africa.