Ghana’s telecoms sector has been described as ‘extremely competitive’ by most of the speakers at the two-day West & Central Africa telecoms conference held in Dakar, Senegal June 15 and 16, 2011.
Making a presentation, Saiful Alam, the Chief Commercial Officer of the Expresso Telecom Group said “Ghana is an extremely competitive country in Africa for telecoms.”
He said, that being so, telecoms providers in the country would have to emphasis on value added services to sustain revenue and to enhance the experience of subscribers.
In an exclusive interview at the sidelines of the conference, Frederic Sallet, Alcatel Lucent’s Vice President for North, West & Central Africa, also told ghanabusinessnews.com, the Ghanaian market is extremely competitive, adding, “the competitive environment however, forces operators to adapt.”
Sallet said the environment also makes Ghana a pacesetter in telecommunications. “Ghana is pacesetter in third party management and network sharing,” he said. Some of the telecoms companies in Ghana have sold their transmission towers to other companies to manage, while others have leased theirs out in management contracts. MTN and Airtel are open to infrastructure sharing in order to reduce costs.
He gave the example of mobile advertising which is being introduced in Ghana by Tigo. And of course there is mobile life insurance products first introduced by MTN Ghana and then Tigo as well.
Ahmad Farouk, MTN Group’s Vice President for West & Central Africa also reiterated that fact – saying the telecoms market in Ghana has become extremely competitive and the only way operators can survive and sustain their businesses is to look out for what subscribers want and offer it to them. He also indicated that MTN was willing to share its infrastructure with other operators to cut costs.
Ghana has six mobile service providers registered to do business. These are MTN, Vodafone, Tigo, Airtel, Expresso and Globacom, which is yet to start operations in the country.
The five companies in operation among them have about 75% of Ghana’s 24 million population as subscribers, according to data from the National Communications Authority (NCA) for the month of December 2010.
Sallet has also told ghanabusinessnews.com that Ghana could become the first country in Africa where the LTE technology for mobile could be launched.
“The competition,” he emphasised, “is driving innovation.”
By Emmanuel K. Dogbevi
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