GT/Vodafone to colour Ghana "red"

Accra, Sept. 8, GNA - In a couple of months Ghana Telecom/Vodafone would hold a "big red party" and stamp their red brand colour on the country.

Captain Albert B. Don-Chebe, Head of Corporate Communications of GT/Vodafone, told journalists that, "in a couple of months we will invite you to our big red party and from then on we will colour the country red in a vigorous manner".

He said, the red party would herald the re-branding of the company, adding that, currently the technical staff of the company are working feverishly to improve the network quality to match the reputable Vodafone brand.

"The quality of our service is more important to us than just the big brand name," he said.

Capt. Don-Chebe said weeks before the controversial Vodafone deal was approved by Parliament, GT on its own did a lot of work to improve the network quality and coverage. "We are working at a very fast pace to guarantee better service delivery."

He said the GT management and their Vodafone partners were currently in high level strategic meetings to set time bound targets, adding that, customer satisfaction was key in the discussion at the strategic meeting.

Capt. Don-Chebe said GT/Vodafone was gearing up to provide high quality fixed line service based on the GSM, wireless and other new technology instead of the cable technology which made GT fixed line operation suffer in the past.

"We want to prove to our customers and to Ghanaians that fixed line service is not dying as the critics of the deal may want to the public to believe," he said.

He also said GT/Vodafone would provide GMS-based phone booths in schools to enable students to make calls, send and receive text messages without having mobile phones.

Capt. Don-Chebe said under the new phone booth service, GT would roll out affordable sim cards for individual students to have access to a common GSM phone both, which would be located close to school administration blocks to ensure close monitoring by school authorities. "We will also provide similar phone booths in high density communities and donate some to rural communities to ensure that they benefited from the boom in the telecom industry," he said. Capt. Don-Chebe said contrary to critics' claims that Vodafone had insignificant experience in fixed line operations, GT management was confident that as the second highest fixed line service provider in Germany, Spain and Italy, Vodafone had more than enough experience to deliver quality fixed line service in Ghana.

"Vodafone has millions of fixed line customers in Europe and in America through Verizon and that is far above what we have here in Ghana."

He said since the Vodafone deal was closed, highly qualified telecom professionals from the Ghana and the Diaspora had been dropping application letters for employment by the day. Capt. Don-Chebe denied that Vodafone staff were coming to take over GT completely. He said professional staff from Vodafone operations around the world would strategically be posted to Ghana from time to time to work with local staff for periods between six months to one year and move on.

"It is not as if some staff of Vodafone are waiting in the UK to come and take over from us, They will be coming from all over the place to transfer knowledge to our people and our people will also visit Vodafone operations elsewhere from time to time and learn from them," he said.

Touching on redundancy, he said the issue would not come up until December 2009, adding that, redundancy would not be done for its own sake but as a matter of change in the pace, type and level of work at GT/Vodafone. He said currently GT was completely debt free and "smelling like rose." 5 Sept. 08