Internet café business slowing down

The Internet café businesses, which emerged in the early 1990s and hit a boom in 2000s have now taken a nosedive as available data indicates that there are about 41.69 million mobile connections in Ghana as at January 2021.

The number of mobile connections in Ghana increased by 3.1 million (+8.1 per cent) between January 2020 and January 2021. The number of mobile connections in Ghana in January 2021 was equivalent to 132.8 per cent of the total population which has reduced the patronage of Internet cafés.

Mr Prince Kyei-Frimpong who works with the Smart Consult Café in Tema told the Ghana News Agency in an interview that the introduction of smartphones made it easy for users to get access to the Internet at will.

Mr Kyei-Frimpong said large access and usage of smartphones had affected the internet café business as most people of them used their own mobile devices to undertake any other internet-based transactions which otherwise would have moved to an Internet café.

He said most people who use the internet café are students undertaking online registration and printout of documents.

Mr Kyei-Frimpong noted that the low patronage had forced operators to charge less for the service they render to their customers to attract them.

Mr. Hudu Odonkor, Manager of Minkom IT Solutions, Tema, agreed to the current challenges facing the Internet café business. “People do walk in to print out an official document like the recruitment forms, to check BECE placements, results, and others,” he said.

However, people still walk in for Internet services, print out, photocopies whenever they want but it does not get crowded most of the time.

Source: GNA