Accra, Ghana//-Many years of MTN Ghana’s investments in network infrastructure are paying off as the company is leading the country’s telecoms market comfortably.
It is the leader in voice, data, and Mobile Money (MoMo). For instance, MTN Ghana has over 24 million subscribers on it network out of the 30 million Ghanaian population.
The company’s 2020 annual report collaborated: “Our network improvements coupled with the increased adoption of data and digital helped to accelerate growth in our customer base.
Subscribers increased by 23.4% year-on-year (YoY) to 24.4 million, with active data subscribers increasing by 32.4% YoY to 10.8 million and active Mobile Money users increased by 16.3% YoY to 10.6 million”.
Nonstop network investments
In MTN’s bid to continue to invest to expand the network, an amount of GH¢995 million (US$149 million) has been committed for the 2021 modernization process.
While about $478 million has been invested in the network since 2019, no wonder, MTN Ghana was declared the best network for both Voice and Data in 2019 by Ookla, a global network speed testing company.
Indeed, since day one, Scancom Ltd (MTN Ghana) which was incorporated in 1994 as a private limited liability company but began operations in Ghana in 1996 has never put off its pedal on network investments.
“MTN has always seen Ghana as a market to invest in because of the confidence we have in the governance and political stability, policy predictability and consistent economic growth over the years and in recent time.
This appetite has driven our investment decisions to invest over six billion US dollars in infrastructure since inception”, the Chief Executive Officer of MTN Ghana, Selorm Adadevoh said the launch of the company’s 25th anniversary celebrations.
From 2G to 3G, 4G and currently 4G+ technologies
MTN continues to consistently be the first to launch innovative products and services. MTN first introduced GSM technology in Ghana and was the first to commercially launch all the generations of technologies: 2G, 3G, and 4G LTE and 4G+.
As a risk-taker, the company invested in 3G technology at a time when 3G devices were not available in the country and if they were, they were not affordable.
Similarly, MTN Ghana invested in 4G technology by acquiring 4G 800MHz FDD spectrum license for $67.5 million in December 2015. But it deployment started in June 2016.
This innovative technology was described by industry experts as ‘transformational’.
4G LTE is five to 10 times faster than 3G. This means faster internet download and upload speeds. Overall, the data experience of MTN subscribers is improved significantly, according to senior officials of MTN Ghana.
Subsequently, the telecoms service provider upgraded the 4G service to 4G+service in March 2019 to provide faster data speeds with widest coverage for its customers irrespective of their locations.
The 4G+ service which runs on 4G LTE Advanced technology using the combination of the 800MHz and 2600MHz for carrier aggregation is an enhancement on the 4GLTE experience.
This provides more capacity and enhanced data speed of up to 20 times if migrating from 3G to 4G+ and five times if migrating from 4G to 4G+.
The company is confident that the 4G+ technology would further impact the development of the country as it provides more opportunities for Ghanaians to fully utilize digital services.
Additionally, it would also go to support the growth of the country in the areas of Artificial intelligence, Internet of Things and Big Data.
With faster internet and wider coverage, the transmission of data can be done with ease, on-the-go, with the best speed everywhere. Higher speed internet broadband promotes business growth and enriched social lives, ultimately boosting national development.
Smart capex strategy
Furthermore, the company continued to deploy its smart capital expenditure (capex) strategy, supporting significant improvement in coverage expansion and maintenance of the network, customer experience and quality of service (QoS) in a year of accelerated need for digitalization.
“As part of this, we rolled out 200 2G, 200 3G and 950 4G sites, which helped relieve the pressure on our infrastructure and significantly enhance our network resilience and service delivery across the nation”, the CEO of MTN Ghana explained.
Our smart capex deployment helped support a 105% growth in data traffic and reached 1,875 total 4G / 4G+ sites nationwide, as we continue our mission to have 4G on every site in the coming years”, Mr Adadevoh added.
Vision to lead the delivery of a bold, new digital world
In line with its vision to lead the delivery of a bold, new digital world to its customers, MTN Ghana, a subsidiary of MTN Group, a leading emerging market mobile operator continues to innovate, create, and build meaningful relationships to improve customer experience.
The technology world has been a fast-growing area but what caused the most revolutionary digitalization is the global pandemic (COVID-19) which has inadvertently compelled many people to latch onto the usage of digital devices.
Consumers of digital services hardly think about how these services are provided and what infrastructure the telecommunications company needs to put in place to get the system running.
Digital transformation requires a lot of capital investment and a well thought out agile implementation approach. Capital investment primarily forms the backbone of a robust network and this can only be realized when the proper plan and capex is invested in it.
As a company that believes everyone deserves the benefit of a modern connected world, MTN had already planned to modernize its network and provide solutions that simplify network management whilst delivering high performance long before the pandemic.
As a digital operator, MTN is in a state of perpetual innovation and the implementation of the network modernization strategy is a tangible evidence of MTN’s commitment to lead the digital transformation agenda.
In view of this, MTN is currently executing an aggressive network modernization exercise which seeks to provide 4G technology to all MTN sites by the end of 2022.
Work is ongoing in the Greater Accra and Ashanti regions to ensure this is achieved by the end of this year-2021, whilst the company works to ensure that sites in all other regional capitals are modernized by the end of next year, the company said in its 2020 annual report.
MTN is proud of these achievements and will do its utmost best to remain the network of choice. Overtime all these investments in technology will pay off; Stakeholders within the ecosystem will enjoy superior services, the network will be more robust and the company will work to serve as a solid backbone to support the government’s digital transformation agenda.
Given the current and future reliance on technology, MTN will continue to position itself to deliver a robust network required to transform MTN Ghana into a digital operator by end of 2023 and a platform company by 2025.
By Masahudu Ankiilu Kunateh, African Eye Report
Email: mk68008@gmail.com
