In a move that has sent shockwaves across the telecom sector in Ghana, the country’s regulator, Ghana’s National Communications Authority (NCA) has ordered MTN’s local entity to stop selling SIM cards immediately. The move has left many questioning if this could be the forerunner for action against the company.
A statement published by NCA on Tuesday said that “following the recent spate of service disruptions on the MTN network, the NCA had engaged the company on several occasions on the issues of quality of service degradation being experienced by consumers of its services.”
The NCA has been pressuring telecom companies in Ghana to boost their services and ensure that call drops and service disruptions do not continue to occur. The NCA also hopes that by holding companies accountable, it will boost infrastructure in order to reach a larger penetration of mobile users in the West African country.
“These include network reliability, network availability, call drop, call set-up and denial of service. In spite of these engagements, network performance on MTN continues to deteriorate,” the NCA statement continued.
As a result of the ban, the NCA has directed MTN to, with immediate effect, cease selling and/or adding any new SIM cards/subscribers to the MTN network until further notice.
MTN Ghana has not yet responded to the NCA’s order.
David Eto
