Telenor Coming This Month

The Norwegian giant telecommunication company, Telenor which was recently approved by the government as the strategic partners to Ghana Telecom (GT) is expected to present its Business Plan this month.
The Minister of Communications and Technology, Mr. Felix Owusu-Adjapong who disclosed this to the ADM in an exclusive interview last week said government would have to scrutinise the report to ascertain its benefits to the economy and Ghanaians in general.
"After that government should be able to take a good decision because when you get the Business Plan and it is good, it means you can now move well," he said.
Mr. Owusu-Adjapong told the ADM the three-member Interim Management Committee (IMC) which was composed to manage GT after Telecom Malaysia left would still be in charge until the new board is announced this month.
On the issue of interconnectivity rivalry between the three main telecommunication companies in the country he assured the public the problem would soon be a thing of the past.
He disclosed that Milicom Ghana operators of Mobitel has agreed to release all the GSM 900 Bandwidth it acquired to the National Communications Authority (NCA) to be redistributed.
"By that I am told that it would increase efficiency on the existing system," he said.
Asked why it took the Ministry such a long time to reach such an agreement with the telephone operators he said, "we have not been talking because we were dealing with private sector and if you do not handle them well you go against the 'Golden Age of Business'."
"We could have said we have passed a law to take it
back," he said, "but that would not have been good for all of us because this government believes in the rule of law."
"We believe that now that there is a good understanding between them we may take a shorter period to get them to do more things," he said.
For instance, the sector minister said, as part of the agreement reached, calls from outside the country to Spacefon would no longer have to go through the International Gateway through the national system. "We have been able to get them to agree that GT would allow Spacefon callers to go straight from the International Gateway to Spacefon and vice-versa."
Earlier the minister launched an eight-page quarterly online Information Technology magazine called, "iConnect Ghana." It is designed to facilitate both online and offline sharing of knowledge and information on ICT for sustainable development.