By Isaac Arkoh/ Nana Oye Gyimah
Cape Coast, Aug. 27, GNA – MTN Ghana has reaffirmed its commitment to lead the mobile telephony services in the country with projected US$1billion investment in network improvement by 2025.
Mrs Georgina Asare Fiagbenu, the Acting Corporate Services Manager, told journalists at the 2022 Central Regional ‘Editors Forum’ in Cape Coast, that the move formed part of activities to transform the network in support of Ghana’s digital drive by ensuring that rural telephony sites as well as network extensions were provided.
She hinted that the company would be rolling out 400 new sites whilst existing 746 sites would be upgraded to 4G to, among others, help enhance services to the more than 10 million worldwide subscribers of Ayoba, which had about 15 micro applications to provide good services to the customers.
A total amount of GHC64,000,000 have been invested nationwide in sustainable community projects, including 87 educational projects, 13 economic empowerment projects and four support initiatives.
MTN Ghana, in the first half of 2022, contributed about 29.6 per cent of its total revenue, amounting to approximately GHS1.4 billion in direct and indirect taxes, and payments to governmental Agencies according to Ghana’s half year Financial Results for 2022.
They were in support of the company’s strong support for government’s developmental projects in digital solutions like Girls in ICT Extended partnership, ICT Hub project, Accra Innovation City project, and Ghana CARES framework support.
On the Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) re-registration, she noted, that MTN had increased registration points to enable customers go through the process with no stress.
The company was also collaborating with the National Identification Authority (NIA) to set up 10 NIA registration points in key regions to enable individuals access the “Ghana Card” which was a caveat for the registration.
“Of the over 2.8 million subscribers only 1.9 customers had linked their cards while 1.3 had fully re-registered their SIM cards. We urge all to give the SIM registration exercise a significant thought and not rush in at the eleventh hour,” Mrs Fiagbenu admonished.
Mr Teddy Hayford Acquah, the Western and Central Regional Technical Manager of MTN-Ghana, was disturbed that despite the significant investments in telephone services, frequent damage to fibre-optic cabling across the country continued to hinder stable and effective network provision in some areas.
He partly blamed the wonton practices to myriad of factors, particularly construction works, saying about 50 per cent of the fibre cuts were caused by road construction activities and private property developers.
Buttressing his claim, he stated that the region recorded more than 142 fibre cuts in eight months and expressed fears that the number could rise to 170 by December this year.
“MTN is concerned about fibre cuts in meters because, such incidences were the cause of network challenges in areas.
“We are not sitting idle but working assiduously to resolve network challenges in about 28 kilometres in areas where this challenge exist because if we do not do that, it is possible to record over 170 cuts by the end of the year,” he stated.
Additionally, he was exceedingly hopeful the Chamber of Telecommunication will commence negotiations with players in the construction industry to remedy the situation to help improve services to customers.
The timely intervention by the Chamber of Telecos, according to him, will not only help mitigate fibre cuts incidences but enrich a sustainable stakeholder relation to deliver quality customer service regardless of one’s location.
Mr Acquah employed the media to support and drive the awareness and sensitizations campaigns about the phenomenon of fibre optic cuts through their various platforms.
GNA