More competition in 4G data service space; Blu Telecom starts trial
BLU Telecom, one of the three companies in the country to access 4G LTE licences, has begun a trial of its systems in selected parts of the capital.
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These include Tema, Spintex Road, parts of Dzorwulu and East Legon. Presently, about 100 potential customers of the company have been given devices and linked to the Blu network to enable them to enjoy unlimited access to the service.
This comes weeks after Surfline had commercially launched its 4G LTE data service in parts of the Greater Accra Region.
The entry of Blu is most likely to make competition among the players keener and it is expected that consumers of data services will be the ones to benefit as the cost of data will reduce.
Players are also likely to devise faster roll-out plans to reach other parts of the country within a shorter period in their quest to capture the market since their profitability will depend on the number of customers that would be hooked on to their services.
Explaining the rationale for the trial service, the Chief Executive Officer of Blu Telecom, Mr Emmanuel K. Collins, said the move would allow the company to act on feedback from customers and correct the systems to be fully ready for the launch before the close of the year.
“We have built up the network and we are ready to go live. Because we believe so much in the customer, we decided to have a founder’s campaign, an initiative by Blu to select some customers, give them devices and place them on the network,” he told telecommunications reporters at a news briefing in Accra.
He said, “They will test the network for about 30 days and give feedback. After that, we will get back to the regulator and later organise the launch.”
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For his part, the Chief Commercial Officer of Blu, Mr Tara Squire, explained that, “The trial network is designed to ensure that by the time we go full blown, our processes and customer experience is spot on.”
“We are passionate about the customer and customer focus is one of our big businesses. We will not step into the marketplace until we have tested the system, because every single process affects the experience the customer has on Blu Telecom”, he said.
The 4G LTE network
The 4GLTE service is designed to provide up to 10 times the speed of Third Generation (3G) networks for mobile devices such as smartphones, tablets and netbooks.
The 4G technologies are also designed to provide IP-based voice, data and multimedia streaming at speeds of at least 100 megabit per second and up to as fast as one giggabit per second, making it the most reliable service to transform the turnaround time of businesses and individuals.
For instance, large documents and files such as videos, audio and pictures can be downloaded in seconds instead of minutes or hours in some instances.
Mobile data penetration
According to the National Communications Authority (NCA), mobile data subscription in Ghana increased by 3.97 per cent in June 2014, bringing the total for the period to 13,962,318 subscribers nationwide.
MTN’s data subscription increased substantially by 2.5 per cent to bring its market share to 50.54 per cent by the end of June, 2014.
Airtel’s subscription increased slightly by 0.34 per cent but its market share decreased by 0.52 per cent ending the period with 14.41 per cent.
By virtue of the 3.97 per cent growth in month on month data subscription base, tiGo also increased subscribers to end the period under review with 13.83 per cent of the total market share.
In the month of June, Vodafone also had a similar experience as tiGO.
For the month under review its market share stood at 18.21 per cent.
Glo’s market share increased to 2.68 per cent while Expresso had 45,816 subscribers representing a market share of 0.33 per cent.
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