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Business News of Saturday, 8 July 2017

Source: Vodafone Ghana

Vodafone takes high speed fibre optic broadband internet to Kumasi

Vodafone Ghana Vodafone Ghana

Telecommunications Giant Vodafone Ghana has taken another giant step in Ghana’s telecommunication and digitalization drive by launching its fibre optic fixed broadband services in the Ashanti regional capital Kumasi.

The new service which is an upgrade from the standard copper cable broadband services is expected to provide ten times internet speed capacity for its consumers who patronize the services in their homes, schools and offices.

The Ashanti region is the next region after the Greater Accra region to receive this service with some thousand eight hundred (1800) entities in seventy (70) communities already hooked onto this amazing internet experience.

The company even before the launch had served Atasomanso, Daban, Daban new site, Anyinam and Kromoase all suburbs of Kumasi with the service.

The official launching which was held at Kwadaso Ohwimase was attended by representatives from the Ashanti Regional Coordinating council, the Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly and traditional authorities in Ohwimase.

The Chief Executive Officer of Vodafone Ghana, Yolanda Zoleka Cuba shared with the gathering that the vision of Vodafone Ghana is to “leave a legacy in igniting Ghana’s digital revolution”.

She explained that the company is on a drive to ensure that children and adults in homes, offices and schools are drafted into a digitized Ecosystem, a development Yolanda stressed was essential to “liberate and make the Ghanaian economy more efficient.”

“As Vodafone, we want Ghana one day to be known as the best West African country for digitization. It is very important that we go out there to create the infrastructure to enable all that to happen,” she pointed out.

A staff with the fixed products and services department of Vodafone, George Aban told Ultimate News’ Ivan Heathcote- Fumador that even though some data packages differed, the enhanced fibre optic services don’t attract any additional cost to the consumer.

“We haven’t differentiated between the fibre packages and the standard broadband packages. The only difference is that the cyber packages start from a hundred and twenty-five cedis while the standard packages start from eighty-five cedis,” he cleared.

Director of Fixed Business and Consumer Operations Patricia Obo-Nai also allayed fears of internet interruptions through cable theft and other network challenges.

“Apart from it carrying the connectivity, you cannot use the optic cable for anything else so there is no incentive to steal it. The challenges we have sometimes is when people are doing road constructions and they go and dig it,” she said.

She, however, pointed out that it was relatively easier and only took a few hours to detect and fix a damaged fibre optic cable compared to the copper cables which could take days and weeks to repair.

Vodafone also set up booths to demonstrate the speed with which the broadband services could be used for video calls, watching Television, streaming live Matches, Playing Games and connecting to E-Learning sessions.

A student of the Knutsford University College Raymond Uwakwe who visited the booths told Ultimate News, “I am very active on the internet and I can say this is the best internet I have used so far. It’s fast when you are downloading with it, when you are playing your games online it goes easily and it is a very nice experience’.