Too much laxity in telecom regulation – Adu-Asare

Kojo Adu-Asare

Former MP of Adentan, Kojo Adu-Asare thinks there is too much laxity in the regulation of the telecoms industry and the telecom operators have taken advantage to get away with very poor services at high rates.

He was speaking in an interview with Adom Business as a telecoms service consumer in commemoration of this year's World Telecoms Day which falls today.

Over the past 18 years Ghana has come from the days of queuing at P&T (Post and Telecoms) to make or receive IDD calls, big and heavy analogue mobile handsets, expensive SIM cards, phones booths and extremely poor quality of service.

Today, on the back of about US$6billion of investment by six telecom operators, there are 26 million mobile phone lines in the country and internet access on phones almost everywhere in Ghana.

SIM cards are now almost free, and people in even remote areas own sleek smartphones on which they are able to make calls to anywhere in the world, browse the internet, check emails, go on social network, download stuff, do live streaming, send SMS and web-based messages, take pictures, watch videos and do much more.

Kojo Adu-Asare acknowledged that Ghana has come very far in terms of the development of the telecoms sector and those responsible, including the telcos and regulators, need to be praised; but there is still much to be desired when it comes to quality of service, customer service, call rates and regulation.

“I own two MTN lines and I am one of the high-end customers of MTN so I think I reserve the right to speak my mind on the kind of service I receive from them and how the regulator allows them and other telcos to get away with such poor services at high cost,” he said.

The former MP noted that it is sad the because of poor services and expensive off-net calls today people own more than one handset just so that they can have the opportunity of making less expensive on-net calls or at least getting the calls through.

“The telcos have been here for so long and we still don't have the kind of service that will make us keep just one handset on one network and expect that we can get the kind of service we deserve. This is unacceptable and I blame it on the regulators,” he said,

Kojo Adu-Asare said there is too much laxity on the part of the regulator, particularly when to comes to fining telcos for poor service.

He contends that the fines the NCA (National Communication Authority) places on the telcos for poor quality of service do not scratch the skin of the telcos so they have not been keen on dealing with the poor quality of service.

“The fines the NCA place on the telcos for poor service are fines they can pay with less than one-hundredth of their daily earnings so they do not feel it. But if the NCA suspends a telco's service for even a day for poor services, they will sit up because they know what it means to lose a day's revenue,” he said.

The former MP also thinks foreign call rates are too high in Ghana. He for instance cited the cost of calls on MTN to Belgium, which he said is 42Gp per minute, saying that “this is unacceptable in this present day when call rates are going down all over the world.”

Touching on Mobile Number Portability (MNP), he noted that whereas MNP is a good idea, it is completely irrelevant because even when one migrates to another network the services are not any better.

“I cannot abandon my MTN lines but if at least another network can offer better services I wouldn't mind migrating,” he said. "Sadly all the networks offer very poor quality of service so MNP has been rendered absolutely useless."

He said consumers had expected that MNP was going to keep the service providers paranoid and on their toes to deliver better quality service as a way of avoiding loss of customer, but that has not happened since MNP was introduced.

Some Ghanaians who spoke with Adom Business also lauded how far the country has come with the development of the telecom sector but they were worried about the chronic poor quality of service and “high call rates”.

But on the issue of call rates, telecoms service currently records the lowest level of inflation in Ghana and call rates in Ghana is one of the lowest in the world.

In terms of quality of service, the telcos have always blamed it on fibre cuts mainly due to road construction. Recently National Security actually confirmed that road construction workers are indeed responsible for fibre cuts and its resultant wide-spread service interruptions.

The telcos are confident that with the measures that National Security has proposed, there would be less fibre cuts and less services interruption.

But it is still not clear whether cross calls and such challenges as “you have dialed a wrong number” when in fact one dials a phone number saved on his phone, are also due to fibre cuts.

On the issue of regulation, former Minister of Communication, Haruna Iddrisu has suggested that instead of the less deterrent fines, the NCA should find ways of employing measures that consumers will have direct benefit from. But the NCA seem to be more interested in collecting the peanuts and keeping it rather than adopting more deterrent measures that benefits customers.

With regards to MNP, the regulator has always insisted that its importance is the power of choice it gives the consumer, and they way it puts the service providers on their toes.