Telecoms companies in Ghana spend GH¢10m on cable cuts repairs in nine months

In nine months this year, telecoms operators have spent more than GH¢10 million on repairs of cable cuts, a situation that caused rampant disruptions in service delivery for consumers.

This amount is beside the loss of potential revenue to the network operators, damage to their reputation and inconvenience to consumers due to avoidable network downtime.

There were over 600 incidents of cuts to telecoms cables in that period. Available information shows that road construction alone accounts for two-third of the cuts in the country.

To pacify consumers for the disruptions in quality of service, some operators went beyond issuing press statements to render apology to rewarding them with free air time.

The National Communications Authority and the Ghana Chamber of Telecommunications in their effort to help address the menace are organising a series of stakeholder consultation to find solution to the conflict of who should be held responsible.

At one such meeting on Thursday in Accra, stakeholders engaged in a blame game as to who actually should be held liable for cable cuts and how the cost of damage should be determined.

The workshop, mainly on the Right of Way Management in the country, also discussed the acquisition of permits (in the right of way) for telecom operators to lay their cables.

Two major observations that came up strongly were lack of collaboration and multiple issuances of permit by different bodies to telecom operators, which largely were seen as contributing to the problem of cable cuts.

Other causes of cable cuts apart from road construction are theft, vandalism, illegal mining, gutter dredging, bushfires and excavation works, but which are said to be minor causes.

Source: GNA