Accra, April 9, GNA - Vice President John Dramani Mahama

at the weekend launched the services of Glo 1 submarine fibre-

optic cable linking Ghana to the rest of the world expressing the

hope that it would help deepen service delivery. He said: 93It is our hope that it will improve our financial

services, improve the health services and the educational system

and transform the agriculture sector through value addition." Vice President Mahama lauded the steady growth of

telecommunication services in Ghana with over 17 million

subscribers, giving a teledensity of 75 percent compared to less

than three per cent in 1997. He said internet services which were hitherto sluggish and

depended on dial up modem had improved with subscribers

increasing from 2.3 million in 2008 to over 4.2 million 2010. Vice-President Mahama said with the focus on terrestrial fibre

to cover all municipal, metropolitan and district assemblies it is

envisaged that high speed internet would be made available in all

parts of the country under the e-government infrastructure

network to be commissioned in the latter part of this year. He commended the Ministry of Communications for the

initiative to build and equip community information centres in all

230 constituencies and deprived communities with internet

facilities. Already, 90 of these community information services centres

had been built, out of which 78 had been equipped with

computers, and 74 of them already hooked onto the internet. Additionally, 492 senior high schools had been equipped with

computers while all technical schools and teacher training

colleges had been supplied with the Ghana Investment Fund for

Electronic Communications. Besides, he said, the Ministry is also seeking to extend internet

facilities to all health institutions to meet the Millennium

Development Goals and also promote e-health. " The increase of bandwidth in the country would deepen

competition, reduce cost and improve the quality of services," he

said. The government, he said, is determined to build an ICT

infrastructure capable of promoting high speed voice and data. He said the increase in bandwidth would promote businesses,

especially in business processing outsourcing.

Mr Haruna Iddrisu, the Minister of Communication, urged

Globacom to reserve some of the additional value added

services such as the printing of scratch cards and cell sites

management to Ghanaians to enable them to enjoy the benefit of

the sector. He said the government remained committed to the

implementation of the mobile number portability and that the

National Communication Authority was working to facilitate the

process for the start of the programme in July. The Attorney General and Minister of Justice had completed

draft regulations to govern the implementation of the policy, he

announced. Mr Iddrisu urged telecom operators to play by the rule to

ensure a smooth take off of the policy. Mr Mohammed Jameel, Group Chief Operating Officer,

Globacom, said the launch of the Glo 1 submarine cable had

manifold significance for Ghanaians, Africans, Industries,

diplomats, academia and governments. He said if fully optimized, the submarine cable had the

capacity to trigger an unprecedented social and economic

revolution not only in the telecommunications sector but also in

the agricultural, transportation, medical, hospitality, tourism and

educational sectors. "With the amazing broadband capacity that the Glo 1

submarine cable offered, Ghanaians and the rest of Africa have

the limitless potential to be connected to a new era of prosperity

where bulk of data that can be used to transform lives and climb

the social and economic ladder can be downloaded and

uploaded at the speed of light," he said. Mr Jameel said with the cable, farmers in the different regions

of Ghana would be able to access high yield seeds from any part

of the world and similarly students and educationists could tap

into Glo 1 facility for long distance learning, research and any

other academic pursuit. Mr Houlin Zhao, Deputy Secretary-General, International

Telecommunications Union, said the cable would drive

tremendous improvements in connectivity and drive down the

cost of communications. It would also enable a whole host of new and valuable services

in Ghana and across the West African Sub-region, including

telemedicine, distance learning, video-conferencing and the

creation of virtual private networks. In addition, it would create foreign investment and

employment opportunities. He lauded Ghana for the strides made in access to broadband

with cost falling from 131 percent of average monthly income in

2008 to 80 percent of monthly income in 2009 and expressed the

hope that the launch of the cable would reduce costs further. The 9,800km long submarine cable network, the first project

of its kind to be executed entirely by a single organisation,

berthed on the beaches of Osu in Accra. Glo 1 runs on a huge capacity, up-gradable to up to 2.5

terabytes per second. Glo 1 would link three European countries,

namely the United Kingdom, Spain and Portugal and 13 other

African countries, with a dedicated link to the USA. Glo 1 offers 99.9 per cent uptime reliability, world-class long

distance voice, video and data communication services to the

African customer and caters for long-term bandwidth

requirements for voice and data transmission across the West

African sub-region.