Increased internet penetration could hold the key to reducing the high cost of data services in Ghana, according to Professor Nii Narku Quaynor, widely regarded as the pioneer of the internet in the country.

He explained that greater adoption and usage would allow service providers to benefit from economies of scale, ultimately making data services more affordable.

"As service providers, cost comes with the volume of bandwidth. If the users are consuming more bandwidth from economies of scale, I can do better," he noted.

Prof Quaynor's remarks come amid rising public concern that Ghana remains one of the most expensive countries for internet access in the subregion.

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He suggested that investing in additional undersea cables could further reduce costs, but such investments would only be viable with a larger customer base.

"If the bottleneck on the part of the internet providers is the connection to the outside, then they should buy more undersea cables. But they will also tell you they don't have the money unless they have lots of users who will pay for it. That problem has always existed," he explained in an interview cited by citinewsroom.com.

Prof. Quaynor also noted that in the early days of the internet in Ghana, providers charged as much as $100 per month per subscriber to cover infrastructure expenses.

However, prices dropped as more users joined.

"When we started the internet, we used to charge $100 a month for every subscriber because I could anticipate that if I charged 200 subscribers, I could meet the $2,000 requirement and use the rest to expand. After we did that, every time we got more users, we lowered the price.

"The new users here are very helpful because they do not consume much and spend less time on pages. It is the experienced users who consume the bandwidth. So you want new users to cover the experienced ones. We need to improve internet penetration for the internet to be cheaper," he emphasised.

SSD/SA

Watch this edition of BizTech with Prof Quaynor below: