Vodafone Makes Inroads in Ghana

Forty-nine days after its arrival, Vodafone, the new owners of Ghana Telecom, has announced its intentions to improve services for its customers.

With a time-bound action plan to address the challenges confronting the company, it has identified specific targets that it aims to meet over the next three months in order to extend coverage to more Ghanaians, enhance the capacity of the network and also to achieve a significant increase in service quality.

It has already carried out the following improvements: the expansion of capacity of the IN by 70%, installation of NgHLR to match the enchanced capacity on the IN, additional capacity at Madina, Dansoman, Teshie-Nungua, Tema A and B exchanges and increased throughput for Broadband4U customers in the Western Region.

Additionally, the company has also cleared 80% of the backlog of installations for corporate customers, introduced new high quality Broadband4U modems, provided 15,000 additional fixed lines at Accra West, Accra East and Kumasi and reduced the fault levels at Madina exchange by 95%.

The battle to turn round perceptions of the former ailing incumbent has clearly begun. For prospective Broadband4U subscribers are being offered a 50% reduction in installation fees from GH¢ 90 to GH¢ 45 plus free installation, effective September 24, 2008, till the end of December 2008.

Finally a number of Ghana Telecom employees have benefited from professional training at other Vodafone operations in Germany, United Kingdom and Spain. The company is clearly keen to show that under its management there will be a clear break with the past.

The more skeptical will want to know whether it can maintain the pace of change over marathon rather than sprint distances.