AT&T shows interest in Ghana Telecom

Barely a month after the Government of Ghana declared its intention to abrogate the Malaysian Telecom, European and American telecommunication giants have begun expressing interest in taking over the industry, Chronicle has learnt.

Prominent among them is the American AT&T, a company reputed for mass telephonic networking, Chronicle gathered.

In order to facilitate its bid ahead of other interested competitors, a very senior manager of American AT&T is expected to arrive in the country very soon to hold discussions with the Senior Minister and Chairman of the Government Economic Management Team, Hon. J.H. Mensah, over AT&T’s investment interest in Ghana Telecom. This was made known to the paper in an exclusive interview with Hon. J.H. Mensah at Elmina recently.

“I have a friend who worked with the American AT&T for many years, he is a very senior manager, on a visit I talked to him about inviting foreign partners into telecom here, he came here himself and decided that the Ghana market AT&T was not willing… from then on he talked to me, we have communicated and he is coming back to see me very soon because they have seen new potential in the market, so you know the companies are all making their calculations”, Hon. Mensah said.

The AT&T’s interest to take over Ghana Telecom has come at the time the government has declared its intention to abrogate the Malaysian Telecom agreement due to non-performance and see AT&T as a likely candidate to push Ghana Telecom to the digital age owing to their experience in that field.

They should have made it possible to use mobile telephone cheap and accessible to the mass market (the Minister referring to Telecom Malaysian). So now we have to talk to different people who are in the mass wireless telephone business like those who are in the fixed line business, and AT&T is in that option also”, Hon. J.H. Mensah said.

This move by the government forms part of strategic decision to jump and get to the digital age, to make mobile telephones accessible on the mass market. The targets that were said to have been set under the agreement with Telecom Malaysian called for increasing the telephone market to about 200,000 landlines. But today 200,000 landlines, according to Hon. J. H. Mensah, is like one exchange in a small place in London.

As part of this strategic decision, Hon. Mensah said one option open to government is to concentrate on building one good telephone exchange in the country then trying to set up competitive ones that will not function well giving an example of that of WESTEL and Ghana Telecom where WESTEL haven’t taken off well and Ghana Telecom, which is supposed to have taken off is not performing very well, Hon. Mensah lamented.

But the minister was quick to add, “Even if we gave you the monopoly, we have set up a regulatory mechanism that the use of that monopoly does not exploit their operations.

When pressed by Chronicle to have the Hon. Senior Minister confirm the likely candidature of AT&T, the Minister said “We have no selected firm but by defining this job, there are lots of companies who have expressed interest in the Ghanaian market because they have seen that Ghanaian market has potential for a mass telephonic market. So they are coming; people from AT&T and these European who could not look at Ghana before are coming”. That was the Hon. J.H. Mensah.

That means if AT&T gets the nod she will have monopolistic control of the telecommunication system in the country.