After a number of requests (well actually two), I’ve thrown together a quick translation of the article on Ghana Telecom in which I am heavily quoted. I posted this shameless plug yesterday.
And got these comments:
“det var som fanden” which, although probably useful in a number of situations, somewhat limits me. I don’t know, can I even say that in a web log?
Posted by: Peter on March 27, 2003 11:07 PM
translate it for us Tomas? 🙂
Posted by: simon on March 28, 2003 02:38 AM
Ghana Telecom cuts internet connections
_The Ghanaian national telecom monopoly, Ghana Telecom, has disconnected phonelines to all Ghanaian ISPs_
By: Karim Pedersen Wednesday 26. march 2003
The debt-ridden telco Ghana Telecom (GT) has cut the phone-lines to all Ghanaian ISPs. GT claims that the ISP are undermining it’s business by offering cheap IP-telephony.
Ghana has 20 million inhabitants, but only around a quarter of a million telephone lines. The countries government tried to get help in rebuilding the
infrastructure from Telecom Malaysia, but the contract was not extended last year, and instead went to Telenor.
But the Norwegian telco didn’t succeeed with a plan for installing 400.000 fixed-lines in Ghana. It is estimated that GT has a weekly deficit of a million dollars, which simply doesn’t allow them to install new infrastructure.
Technical Consultant Tomas Krag of wire.less.dk confirms that IP-telephony is a problem for telcos such as GT. He was a GeekCorps volunteer in the Ghanaian Capital Accra, in 2001, and is familiar with conditions in the country.
“In contrast to the traditional telephone market, GT has to pay money everytime a IP-pakket is transportet in or out of Ghana. The money ends in the pockets of one of the Global carriers”, he says.
The national telecom monopolies in most african countries make a lot of money on telephone conversations initiated abroad. This is because of international agreements that regulate the sharing of revenue for international conversations.
“Every time a Ghanaian living abroad calls home, almost half the money is received by the Ghanaian telco”, explains Tomas Krag.
Since there are many Ghanaians living abroad this income constitues a significant part of the coluntries foreign exchange income.
“That is why GT has tried to use the law to react. Since there are no legal precedents concerning VoIP in relation to the telco monopoly, they’ve argued that VoIP is a breach of telecom regulation and have shut down the ISPs. This situation is not unique for Ghana, but has occured in a number of other countries”, he adds.
Tomas Krag is convinced that VoIP is only behind a very small part of the telco’s losses. The problem is exacerbated by continuously falling costs for international telephony, and a general fall in the length and number of international phone-calls.
Last week the situation lead to violent demonstrations in a number of places in Ghana. The protesters were complaining that most publæic phones are no longer functioning, while GT is still selling phonecards, that are useless because the clients cannot use them.
At the same time it is becoming more and more difficult to call Ghana from abroad. A single number may have to be dialled again and again for hours before a connection is made.
More info: http://www.balancingact-africa.com/news/back/balancing-act_145.html
Why would call frequency and duration be going down? Surely lowering costs would encourage people to spend longer on the phone? And if there are fewer callers and tech is improving why is it getting harder to call Ghana from abroad?
David,
those are valid points, and although the article makes it sound like that info came from me, I never made such claims.
On the other hand, I believe that while VoIP is an insignificantly small part of the reason, e-mail, IM and other internet-based media are replacing telephones and faxes for things like business-communication. That would be part of the reason that number of spoken minutes are dropping.
On the quality of infrastructure that is probably the result of lack of maintenance. Ghana Telecom is basically cashless, and has absolutely no possibility of maintaining the network. And telecom infrastructure on a national level degrades pretty quickly without maintenance.
Hi There,
I happened onto your site by accident and have enjoyed looking around. It occurs to me that we should perhaps speak together about some potential business.
Our company ATMC is the world leader in international operator-assisted calling services. We work with PTT’s directly, processing mostly international collect calls for them. They love us because we pay them a lot for calls that they would otherwise just get the settlement rate for, and we do a terrific job.
Your connections with telco’s in poor countries, like Ghana, could be most valuable to you if you brought in some collect calling business from them.
If you want to explore this, or perhaps know someone that this would make sense to, please call me.
Best Regards,
Josh Urbach
VP-Network Services
ATMC
310-450-5032 (in Los Angeles)