Ghana’s mobile industry has undergone more than 2,000 incidents related to fibre cuts in just the first half of 2019. Data released by the Ghana Chamber of Telecommunications shows ‘2,000 incidents of fibre cuts and 600 incidents of theft at base stations [have afftected] over 18 million subscribers’.
CEO of Ghana Chamber of Telecommunications, Kenneth Ashigbey says, “the data gathered speaks to the enormous problem that service providers are faced with; where limited funds are being expended on repairs of cuts and replacement of equipment as against expanding the network to enhance quality, reach and experience for customers.”
“The service providers have to deploy extra meshed networks to provide additional redundancies to ensure that, the over 300 cuts being experienced per month currently do not impact more than 25 per cent of the network” continues Ashigbey.
He adds, “we cannot continue to accept this menace as a norm, and we are working assiduously to reach all partners and stakeholders who work within the Right of Way (RoW) across the country to agree on modalities to reduce if not eradicate the menace”.
In an article on telecompaper, the damage is as a result of ‘ private developers, road contractors, unknown criminals, and other utility providers — this costs the industry over $5.5 million in direct repairs, not counting the cost of loss of revenue, the non-traditional temporary solutions deployed as well as additional capital expenditure to keep network availability stable’.
By Jenna Cook
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