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Veep advocate sanctions against telecom operators
Accra, Aug. 27, GNA – Vice President John Dramani Mahama, on
Wednesday charged the National Communications Authority (NCA),
to apply sanctions against telecom operators that fail to
honour their licence requirements to provide quality service
to the public.
“Indeed failure of compliance by operators to the primary
qualities of service indicators must be met with the
appropriate sanctions by the NCA that will prompt them to
perform to standard,” he said at the inauguration of the
refurbished Head Office building of Millicom Ghana Limited,
operators of Tigo.
The Vice President said the sanctions should not be left for
NCA alone, adding “the public should also sanction
operators, which provide poor network quality service by
migrating to less problematic networks”.
Tigo, originally Mobitel, was the first of six multinational
mobile telecom service providers to be licensed to operate
in Ghana. Tigo was licensed in 1991 and started operations
in 1992.
Subsequently Spacefon, now MTN, Celltel, now Kasapa, Westel,
now Zain, Onetouch, now Vodafone and Glo have been licensed.
With six operators serving a population of 22 million, out
of which 64 per cent own mobile phone numbers, network
problems such as inadequate service coverage, network
congestion, network unavailability, high call drop rates,
delays in call set up time, error in connections, voice
mutation among other public complains are rampant.
Mr. Mahama noted that these network problems were of much
concern to the public and should attract the regulatory
attention of the NCA.
“Telecom operators must move away from the practice where a
user of their telephone service when being reached will be
deemed to be out of reach but on the contrary is just within
reach,” he stressed.
He said quality service was crucial in the telecom sector,
adding that it was therefore important for the NCA to
regulate the performance of key services offered by
operators, by setting quality of service standards that
would enjoin operators to submit periodic reports of their
service quality, as determined by the NCA.
Mr. Mahama said the challenge was for the NCA to regularly
review the quality of service requirements, to take into
account industry and technology changes, as well as changes
in consumer demand, to ensure that the requirement remained
relevant.
He noted that another area of concern was the alleged health
implications of radioactive frequency radiation, from
telecom masts and other devices, saying that the operators
should make a collaborative effort to alley the fears of the
public through research and development and educate the
public on the outcome of such research.
“Collaborative research networks could in this regard be
developed between the operators and our academic
institutions of higher learning to undertake sociological
and technical research with the active participation of the
public,” he said.
Mr. Mahama also urged operators to take co-locations of
masts more seriously and pursue it on a higher scale.
He said the initiative would reduce public anxiety about the
spread of masts and also save the operators lots of money.
Mr. Mahama noted that each of the operators tend to erect
their own masts with separate standby power generators
fuelled regularly in areas of smaller populations, whereas
just a single mast had enough capacity to serve all the
mobile phone users.
The Vice President said the telecom companies could
co-locate and cut down on their capital investments and
translate them into subsidised rates and social intervention
activities to benefit customers and the general public.
He reminded operators of the need for fair and healthy
competition, saying that “this call enjoins the NCA to
ensure the creation of an even and fair terrain to
facilitate telecom development…”
Mr. Mahama said in the near future government would invite
the operators to discuss how to increase investments in
Ghana’s export sector, which generated most of the foreign
exchanged consumed by the telecom sector; and also how to
step up Ghanaian participation in the telecom sector.
Mr. Haruna Iddrisu, Minister of Communications observed that
“Tigo has refused to suffer from network congestion”, and
congratulated the company for providing one of the best
quality service in the country.
Mr. Percy Grundy, Out-going Chief Executive Officer of
Millicon Ghana said since Tigo came to Ghana it had
reinvested every cedi it made back into the economy, saying
that the transparent look of its new building was symbolic
of the company’s transparency.
He said Tigo Ghana now employed 411 permanent staff, 207
outsourced jobs and 36 on contract basis, adding that the
company provided income to thousands of Ghanaians through
its peripheral jobs opportunities.
Mr. Grundy assured customers of continued affordable tariffs
on a reliable network and also assured of continued social
interventions through the Millicom Fraternity for Humanity
Projects.
Mr. Tismark Inja, Board Chairman of Millicom Ghana, said
till date, Tigo had invested half a billion into the
economy, $680,000 in training and development and currently
had a 1,190 base stations, nine switches, about 2.5 million
subscribers and a coverage rate of between 65 per cent in
the Eastern Region and 97 per cent in Greater Accra.
He noted that the regulator had in the past not played fair
towards some operators, including Tigo and appealed to the
Vice President to bring his wealth of understanding about
the industry to bear on its operations to ensure sanity and
fairness in the regulatory environment.
GNA
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