Remove taxes to boost internet penetration – Telecoms Chamber

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• Abeeku Mensah 10 years ago

  The government of Ghana, from parliament through the president to the courts in Ghana, never wanted Ghana to become a wired nation with the sale of Ghana Telecom. Members of the Telecom chamber and Mr. Sakyi Addo should appre ...
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  The government of Ghana, from parliament through the president to the courts in Ghana, never wanted Ghana to become a wired nation with the sale of Ghana Telecom. Members of the Telecom chamber and Mr. Sakyi Addo should appreciate the foolishness brought on by Kufour's administration during the sale. It was one thing to have sold our entire telecommunications infrastructure on the cheap to a foreign entity but it is altogether the height of incompetence on the part of the departments who gave approval for anything related to the sale especially with our 5% ownership clause. Vodafone can only pay the government of Ghana dividends when there is presumed operational profits earned by Vodafone. If the nincompoops who negotiated the sale of Ghana Telecom had foresight, ideas and ideals where they wanted Ghana to be, they could have insisted for the 5% government shares to be vested into the backbone infrastructure throughout the country to enable all government agencies to be online within 10 years of the approval and sale of Ghana Telecom to Vodafone. This simple but important change would have ensured that every government office in Ghana at this time and date could conduct business electronically via the net. Yet to date government offices in Accra are nowhere near full interoperability with other offices in other districts and regions in Ghana. This inability ultimately affects all the other providers operating in Ghana despite all the promotional sales and adverts clogging the airwaves in Ghana.
  Taxes on our telecom operators do not slow down advances; it is the lack of dependable competition that is limiting growth in Ghana. Telecom operators in Ghana continue to operate mostly on pay-go basis while those selling business systems to the few business entities in Ghana fail to offer complete transactional operations between offices in Accra and other regional cities. The reliance on wireless systems has been a scheme by telecom operators to take money from Ghana's cell phone subscribers. Can anyone in the industry explain why their own members continue to lie to their own subscribers when the tell a user “the party you called cannot be reached” and or the party you’re trying to reach is out of the coverage area?” Or when others say “the party you called is on the other line please try later?” Neither of these excuses have been accurate and or are true reasons for communications problems and you people know it. The organization of Telecom operators need to get our members of parliament to revisit the Vodafone deal to demand a time line when Vodafone will complete the physical land based optic fiber backbone of Ghana's telecom network. It is then and only then all the other providers can plan accordingly on their growth opportunities and or introduce other new systems unto the Ghana market.

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• Walt 10 years ago

  Abeeku, good comments. Well Done!

  Abeeku, good comments. Well Done!

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