Preparing for the future in ICT

The ICT landsape is fast changing and it wil only take investment to put their right infrastrutire in place to keep with the pace. Charles Benoni Okine writes about how Ghana can prepare for the future.

The growing love for smart phones in the country has awakened the telecom companies in the country to prepare for its attendant demand for data services.

This means that, the telecom companies are expected to invest more capital to expand their infrastructure base to be able to accommodate the demand and live up to the competition that is also going to spark.

According to Connect World, a reputable ICT magazine, data usage on the mobile phone increased to 4.8 billion terabytes and was slated to grow to 6.3 billion by close of last year. Thirty-four per cent of the mobile workforce admitted to having experienced what has been described as a ‘bill shock’.

Challenges

This brings to the fore the need for modern day operator to be able to respond to a wide variety of changes and challenges; subscribers, data patterns, competitor moves, regulations, substitute products such as false apps, fraudsters and the ever-changing dimensions of technology.

The operator needs to handle these changes in their home networks and in foreign networks as well, wherever their subscribers roam.

In other words, it is critical for mobile operator service infrastructure to be both powerful and flexible enough to help operators meet these challenges.

Although the device platform sector has been a hotbed of innovation, service infrastructures have been slow to adapt. Infrastructure platforms built for 99.999 per cent availability are not; generally speaking designed to respond rapidly to market demands for new services.

Constrained capital expenditures, regulatory pressures, and the realities of their local markets are leading operators to evolve their business models.

The mobile operator services picture needs a very different ‘look’ to keep pace with the times.

The Future

By 2020, the magazine is of the view that mobile operator services will need to be:
Rapidly deployed, on demand to users worldwide through an open framework of service integration; Globally managed for QoS - including for data, voice and video application performance ; Integrated via device and cloud applications to provide security, and QoS; Seamless experience and similar costs for all roaming and non-roaming usage;  and Used by more automated (M2M) devices than user devices
In the end, it is inevitable that mobile operator service platforms will evolve to address core issues that operators face as markets develop.

The Ghana situation

The evolution of the telecom sector in the country has been phenomenal and it continues to baffle the minds of major international brands why Ghana alone with a population of about 25 million, could have six international operators.

The companies have brought fierce competition in the telecoms sector with each scrambling for subscribers.

In the last few years, the companies have been blamed for not providing the required QoS to their customers.

While the telecos continue to give all manner of excuses for their inability to live up to expectation, they are now being slapped with heavy taxes on their profits with the passage of the amended Communications Service tax (CST) which now adds a new stream of tax.

Per the new law, the telcos are also expected to pay six per cent as taxes on interconnectivity charges. Telcos pay 25 per cent as corporate tax, 15 per cent VAT/NHIL and are absorbing the six per cent imposed on customers in what has been dubbed “talk tax”.

The Ghana Chamber of Telecommunications has been fighting against the taxes as it argues that the move will prevent the players in the industry from making the required investments to meet the future demands.

For instance, at forum in Accra, the Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Chamber of Telecommunications, Mr Kweku Sakyi-Addo, confirmed the urgency to which the telecom operators in the country required funds to undertake such expansion in anticipation of the eventuality.

Presently, there it is estimated that broadband penetration in the country is about 20 per cent and expected to quadruple by the next five years, hence the need for the telecom companies to begin preparations towards that to avoid service interruptions as a result of pressure.

Way Forward

Telecoms has been described as an essential service and not a luxury. It is therefore the resolve of the government to ensure that mobile and data penetration in particular is significantly increased to cover the entire country to help accelerate the country’s development.

There is presently pressure on the telcos to improve the QoS in the country but they have continuously found an excuse why they are unable to meet the demands of the customers and the government, hiding behind fibre cuts and high taxes among many other things that hinder their resolve.

On the part of the government, it has also found the telcos a fat cow to milk whenever it was in need of funds to patch holes in the economy.