TIGO: Our Network For Poverty Reduction

Though Ghana has experienced the proliferation of several telecommunications providers over the last one and a half decades, one good aspect of this development has been the way and manner communication has been made very easy in even the remotest village of the country.

The profit motive of any business entity must not make it forget about the need to see the customer as the integral part f the entity’s quest to outlive the essence of its existence.

TIGO is a network that by all ideals is committed to its customers and has evolved so many promotion packages all of which are aimed at giving customers value for their money.

This write-up is not intended to malign other communication service providers but to appreciate with the greatest sense of fairness, and objectivity, the marketing strategies as well as service provision techniques that Tigo has employed to give impetus to the government’s efforts at poverty reduction. Tigo is undoubtedly the pro poor communication service provider of an excellent standing. I intend to state six (6) reasons why Tigo-the best in multimedia cellular communications, is our network for poverty reduction, and indeed the Network that ACTUALLY WORKS, below are the six reasons:

1. TIGO like other networks, has ‘FREE NIGHT CALLS’ but whilst some other networks will give six (6)hours of free night call out of which one is only guaranteed quality service in the first three(3) hours; Tigo gives seven (7) hours of free night calls with their usual day time quality service guaranteed in all the seven (7) hours;

2. Other communications service providers may have what is called the ‘CALL ME BACK’ service, but what Tigo has as call back service is much more simple and motivating. The call back provided by Tigo comes in two ways: one is automatic and the other is manual, a caller who has no call credit but wishes to get in torch with other Tigo subscriber has two options:(1)You either try to call the person so that Tigo will generate an automatic message to the person, stating your Tigo number as well as the time you tried to call but did not have call credit to do so, or (2) You simple enter *888*the Tigo number# and then press send/o.k. to send the call back message; 3. Tigo also gives its subscribers reduced call rates ,Tigo to Tigo from Monday to Friday(6am-6pm),By this, Tigo users pay half the rate per minute to call other Tigo subscribers;

4. Tigo in a show of customer driven service provision also has an excellent package known as the ‘EXTREME VALUE’. This facility enables customers to pay a fixed amount of credit to enable them make calls free of charge to all Tigo lines from 6am to 4pm or 6am to 5am depending on which of the two Extreme Value services one activates;

5. Another poverty reduction strategy in terms of service package of Tigo is the periodic and in fact the frequent Tigo Days being declared to enable subscribers double and in some instances triple their credit upon reloading with specific scratch card denominations;

6. If indeed quality service provision is the cardinal issue that determines people’s choice of which telecommunication network to join, then Tigo unquestionably stands unique since it has the best signal quality. Unlike other networks, when the Tigo network tells you a dialed number can not be reached, it is nothing but the truth that the dialed number is turned off or out of coverage area.

A great percentage of the Ghanaian population now use mobile phones, this implies that so much money is spent on phone calls by most Ghanaians especially businessmen and women whose business activities are mostly done through phone calls. Tigo in my opinion is the network that should be used if Ghanaians intend to cultivate the habit of saving the hundreds of Ghanaian Cedis that are expensed on calls all the time.

There are an assortment of other exciting packages provided by Tigo all of which I may not be able to mention in this piece, for instance the voicemail, call divert and TigoSMSplus services including Free Credits often given out to loyal customers are but a few of them. do you know why in the country no person or group of persons have never demonstrated or organized any press conference or better yet; issued any press statement to complain about the poor quality of Tigo network in their area? Your guess, which I don’t know may just be very right.

It will not be an exaggeration or a mere rhetoric to say that Tigo is by all considerations, THE NETWORK THAT ACTUALLY WORKS!

The writer is not and has never been an employee of TIGO but is simple expressing his candid opinion.

DOOBIA MAHAMA KASULI

doobiakasuli@yahoo.com