Ghana currently has a broadband spectrum of approximately 7,160 gigabytes (or 7.16 terabytes), says Haruna Iddrissu, Minister of Communications.
According to the Minister, over the past two years, major industry players in the telecommunications sector have invested enormously into submarine fibre optic cables to increase the bandwidth capacity in the country.
“To date Ghana is connected to major submarine cables – The Main One Ghana Ltd cable is supplying additional 1,280 Gigabytes; and Glo Mobile Ltd provides 640 Gbits/s. The West African Cable System (WACS) has landed at the Omanye Street, South La Estate, Accra, as expected in July 2011 and it will provide additional bandwidth capacity of 5,120 Gbits/s when operational by the end of the year,” said Mr Iddrissu at a press briefing in Accra October 3, 2011.
“Cumulatively, bandwidth capacity available for usage in Ghana is approximately 7,160 Gigabytes (or 7.16 Terabytes), a multiple of 60 times the current capacity supplied by SAT-3,” he said.
He noted that the country well positioned as the potential ICT-Enabled Services hub in the sub-region as government’s key objective is to increase the overall capacity for transmission of telecommunications data (bandwidth) to provide high-speed voice, video, and internet services to all districts across the nation.
Mr Iddrissu, citing various studies conducted indicated that for every 10 percentage point increase in broadband penetration, GDP increases by 1%, thus the global focus on promoting high broadband penetration.
Experts believe that if the digital switch-over is fully completed, more broadband spectrum will be created.
Mr Malcolm Johnson, Director of ITU’s Telecommunication Standardisation Bureau, in an exclusive interview with ghanabusinessenws.com early July this year in Accra, said increases in broadband spectrum can be created if the digital migration comes in full flight.
Mr Johnson tells ghanabusinessnews.com that the “Switching over to digital is five times more and efficient in terms of spectrum terms than the analogue.”
By Ekow Quandzie