The Ministry of Communication, has announced it is putting measures to at least mitigate the monopoly MTN enjoys in Ghana as its dominance is not helpful for the growth of the Ghana Telco space.
In a statement released Sunday sighted by www.Ghgossip.com, it revealed that almost 92% of Ghana’s 4G spectrum is covered by MTN while the rest of the Telcos and other Internet Service Providers (ISPs) share the rest, a situation the ministry said was untenable.
The government has since, odered the National Communications Authority (NCA) to enforce provisions of the Electronic Communications Act, 2008 (Act 775) and the National Telecommunications Policy (NTP) to address disparities in market and revenue share in the telecommunications sector.
Communication minister Madam Ursula Owusu Minister, says the aim of the new system is not meant to break MTN as a business (Significant Market Power [SMP]), but rather to “ensure various operator vendors were not subject to exclusionary pricing or behaviour, ensure that SMP’s access to information did not disadvantage any value added service of non-SMP operators and require operators to present implementation plans on national roaming services within the next 30 days for execution on or before the next 90 days”.
The statement added that the measures were to start immediately, and that the NCA was expected to work with all network operators which must cooperate to ensure it was done painlessly.
“We have come a long way in a very dynamic industry which has seen ancestors of all the current operators being the dominant player at one stage. Ghana Telecom, Mobitel, now MTN. Measures taken then to open up the market to ensure fairer competition, though unpleasant to the dominant player then, eventually inured to the benefit of the consumer and resulted in the vibrant telecom sector of today. This will also have the same result over time. It is corrective and not punitive,” the Minister’s statement added.
Currently, MTN covers 55.9% of Ghana’s voice Market share, Vodafone 21.93, Airtel Tigo 20.37% and Glo 1.75%. MTN however dominates the 4G space with over 92%.
Source: www.Ghgossip.com
