Smaller Telcos Save About GHs 86.6m After Declaration of MTN Ghana as Significant Market Power

The National Communications Authority (NCA) in their attempt to curb the imbalances on the Ghanaian Telecommunications market, declared MTN Ghana as a Significant Power on June 09, 2020.

The Authority says it was an attempt to preventing unhealthy competitions and monopoly in the Telcos market.

In line with that, the NCA applied measures which included asymmetrical interconnect rate in order to favor the the disadvantaged operators.

The authority as a performance of its regulatory power, also set floor pricing on all minutes, data, SMS and reviewed and approved all pricing of MTN Ghana as required by law.

MTN Ghana was also directed by the NCA to use differential prices for on-net and off-net transactions so as to ensure that various operators were not subjected to exclusionary pricing.

Nearly 3 years after the implementation of these measures,the NCA says it has resulted in an asymmetric savings of GHs 86.5 for smaller Mobile Network Operators.

It has been recorded that, in the last two years, Vodafone Ghana – another leading telecommunications giant saved GHs 50.4 million which represented 58 percent of the total asymmetric savings.

AirtelTigo followed closely by raking a total of GHs 34.8 million in savings, representing 40 percent of the total asymmetric savings.

Glo Ghana raked a total of GHs1.6 million which is 2 percent of the total asymmetric savings.

While the NCA boss; Mr Joe Anokye says forensic analysis haven’t been conducted to know how these savings are being used by the companies, they savings made might have been used to improve liquidity positions of those companies.

“So one thing that specified in SMP was the fact that the smaller players should reinvest in the savings from the asymmetry that connects right into infrastructure, but there’s no evidence to show that.”

“Of course, we haven’t done forensic analysis to know what they use that money for but at some point, probably, we have to do that,” he stated when  asked whether non-SMP players are investing or plouging back their savings to bring them up to speed.