Mobile market records highest growth in 3yrs

Mobile phone access lines in the country recorded a 7.2 percent growth in the first eight months of this year, making it the biggest gain by mobile network operators in the last three years for the same period.

The mobile phone lines in the country, according to the latest National Communication Authority (NCA) figures, reached a little above 32.8 million -- which is 2.19 million more lines than the six operators in the country have signed onto their networks since January this year.

The growth in mobile phone subscription has come as a good news to the operators and other stakeholders who feared the market had reached a saturation point, since the last time mobile telephony lines recorded growth beyond this year’s numbers was in 2011 when the market grew by 14 percent.

The size of the Ghanaian mobile subscriber market is 126 times the size of its fixed-line subscriber base as at the end of August this year, with the uptake of fixed line service erratic.

The country’s telecom sector, driven mainly by the mobile sector, is one of the most sophisticated and vibrant ones in Africa with a penetration rate of 121 percent in a population of an estimated 27 million.

The industry is one of the highest taxpayers in the country, contributing about GH?1billion in taxes last year, which is equivalent to 5.4 percent of GDP.

There are concerns, however, about the continuous profitability of the industry with at most only two operators reported to be making profits, with some of the officials of the NCA admitting in confidence to the B&FT that some of the operators are “just swimming to survive”, despite workers of the industry being among the top-earning employees in the country.

With increased competition, market operators -- MTN, Vodafone, tiGO, Expressso, Airtel and Glo -- are increasingly forced to find innovative ways of distinguishing themselves from the competition in order to gain and retain customers.

Nonetheless, the mobile operators continue to suffer from a degree of reputational damage when it comes to providing customers with acceptable service and grievance resolution.

A survey by the industry regulator not long ago found poor customer service provision and network challenges as the biggest challenges facing the industry, as respondents cited the two as their main concerns with operators.

Implementation of the mobile number portability system into the telecom sector has helped customers to seamlessly switch operators for better services, while maintaining their existing contact numbers.

However, the widespread complaints of poor customer issues and network challenges have forced many people to stay with their operators even when the network service provision is bad, with many customers continually accusing the mobile network operators of failing to deal with poor customer service issues, despite spending heavily on sophisticated marketing strategies to win new customers.