Ghana Internet providers cry foul

The Ghana Internet Service Providers Association (GISPA), which was formally launched yesterday, has cried foul about the treatment being meted out to it by Ghana Telecom.

GISPA, whose primary objective is to protect and promote the interest of Internet Service Providers (ISP) in Ghana, says Ghana Telecom offers no quality of service guarantees to ISPs.

Disclosing this at the launching ceremony, Mr. Leslie Tamakloe, Chairman of GISPA and Chairman and Chief Executive of Internet Ghana, said there are no discounts and or rebates for poor service interruptions.

He added that there is "no alternative, no urgency to address problems when they occur". The end result is poor service to the consumer, with no possibility of redress", he noted.

Mr. Tamakloe said that ISPs today operate over 3000 telephone lines from Ghana Telecom lines to which he said ISPs clients dial to access the Internet and that their value contribution to the generation of the telephone revenue has not been rewarded by revenue sharing.

ISPs, he pointed out, in this context are value added service providers for Ghana Telecom and that GISPA believes that revenue sharing is fundamental to lower and affordable subscriber cost for the Internet Service.

Mr. Tamakloe said he believes that the dividends of a level playing field for all in the telecommunications industry are the fastest route to an anti-HIPC development.

However, despite GISPA's plea against unfair deal, it promises to ensure its unfailing contribution to the industry by actively promoting the development of an inter-exchange network that will link and provide peering access to all local ISPs.

Such an exchange, he said, will permit ISPs to share in Country Internet traffic that is Ghana bound, so e-mails from one IPS in Ghana does not have to travel to the United States and Canada to reach another ISP in Ghana.

Not surprisingly, the Minister for Transport and Communications, Mr. F. K. Owusu-Adjapong, admitted that there are indeed many obstacles to the development of the Internet in the country, even though considerable efforts have been made to improve the state of telephone networks.

He said government recognizes among other things, the relative scarcity and poor quality of telephone lines and the lack of competition with the dominant public telecom network operators due to inadequate regulations governing access to the International backbone network.

He said these obstacles notwithstanding the situation is not desperate. Government is determined to give ICT development its full attention and every effort would be made to eliminate obstacles to the use of the Internet and to build a proper Internet development strategy.

He, however, cautioned the ISP subscribing public to beware of security issues, such as insecure personal information, viruses, hackers, Spam mail etc.