The Minister of Commuication, Haruna Iddrisu has asked the NCA to reject excuses from telecom operators in the face of continuing customer dissatisfaction with their services.
He said it is unacceptable and unjustified for operators to use challenges confronting the sector — including poor energy supply, fibre cuts and fuel-theft — as excuses for poor service delivery.
“I want the NCA to declare zero-tolerance for poor quality of service. All we ask the network operators to do with the infrastructure companies is to ensure service availability at all times,” he said.
The Minister’s comments were made at the just-ended telecom summit in Accra and come in the wake of frequent service disruption in network performance recently, as well as call-drops and call-mutations among others in the face of increasing investments in network expansion.
Mr. Iddrisu said telecom operators have for some time now been hiding behind the challenges in the sector to provide sub-standard services to communication services consumers, including the Presidency.
“Just about a month ago, the president couldn’t access his phone from the morning to the afternoon. You know what that means: it could have national security implications. But it happened because of the destruction of a fibre link from the utility company to the office of the President.
“We are simply saying that communication is no longer a luxury and must be treated as such. Therefore, when you (telecos) are investing to deploy your infrastructure, please ensure that it is reliable and dependable.
“I concede that sometimes criminals may cut fibre to sell, but operators in Ghana must endeavour to maintain minimal standards of quality of service.”
Telecom operators and infrastructure providers have pinpointed poor energy supply, fibre cuts and fuel-theft as the topmost challenges threatening their delivery of quality service in the country.
The General Manager in charge of Operations and Maintenance at MTN, Ibrahim Misto, contends that frequent disruption to network infrastructure and increasing utility rates, which do not match service improvement, are impacting negatively on quality service delivery and operating expenses of telecom operators.
He said last year MTN, the country’s biggest cellular network operator, suffered more than 155 fibre cuts and has since the beginning of this year suffered 100 more cuts — which has affected the network performance.
Managers of American Tower Company Ghana which manages MTN’s cell sites added that the biggest issue for infrastructure operators is fuel-theft, which significantly affects network performance.
By Evans Boah-Mensah
