Mr Abraham Kofi Asante, the Administrator of the Ghana Investment Fund for Electronic Communications (GIFEC), on Thursday said the electronic fund is set to expand access to telephony to 750 more unserved and underserved communities in the country.

This, he said, is expected to accelerate communication coverage in the country.

Mr Asante said this on the sidelines of the just ended International Telecommunications Union (ITU) Telecom World 2017 Conference in South Korea.
He said: “GIFEC has identified about 750 sites across the country for which we are making efforts to cover”.

He stated that previously GIFEC used to have a model where it provided funding for deployment in the rural areas adding; “This time we want to develop by forging partnerships with Telecom operators and equipment providers”.
Mr Asante noted that the Telcos and Equipment Providers would provide the services and equipment respectively whilst GIFEC would facilitate the selection and acquisition of sites.
He added that GIFEC would make other interventions when the need arose.
Meanwhile, governments and other information and telecommunication (ICT) players, both globally and locally, have been urged to work together to connect the 3.9 billion people who lack access to ICT in the world.

The ITU Secretary-General, Houlin Zhao, who made the call at the opening of the conference, observed that whereas it was refreshing that 95 per cent of the world today had mobile connections, it was sad to note that a significant number of 3.9 billion people were yet to be connected.

In Ghana, the Government, through the National Communications Authority, recently announced the issuance of the 900MHz 2G spectrum to deploy Universal Mobile Telecommunication Systems (UMTS) and provide affordable 3G service in the unserved and underserved areas.

Deployment via the UMTS on 900MHz is reported to be much cheaper than deploying same on the 2100MHz for 3G.