Telcos urged to co-share facilities
The Vice President of Fibre Infrastructure Company, Uton International, Mrs Zowo Zhao has urged telecommunication companies in the country to co share infrastructure in order to cut down on operational cost and be able to offer affordable services to customers.
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She said the telecom industry was growing as the demand for internet, especially, was increasing at a very fast rate but how to provide affordable internet was also becoming a challenge to the telcos.
“Affordability is very important in this country and the price of internet services in this country is tremendously high but this is mainly because everything in the telecoms industry is very expensive.
All the raw materials and equipment cost a lot so the telcos will have to co-share infrastructure to cut down on some of these costs,” Ms Zhao said in an interview with the GRAPHIC BUSINESS.
“All the companies are building their own poles, why should it be so? If they have clear minds they should all be sharing same poles so everybody will not have to build their own poles or do their own trenching,” she noted.
“When you go around, you see lots of trenching as people are digging the ground and every company wants to lay its own fibre whiles they can just share one,” she added.
She said the co-sharing would bring their cost down and once their cost were down, cost of services would also reduce and quality of services would also be improved.
“Business operation cost in this country is very high if the business operation cost can come down, then it will be easier for them to sell cheaper internet and once is cheaper, you will get more demand,” she mentioned.
Situation in Ghana
In Ghana, network companies such as Vodafone, MTN, Airtel, Tigo, Expresso and Globacom (GLO) are experiencing increasing subscribers for both voice calls and internet services.
Competition in the industry has been intensified making service providers search for innovative strategies to survive the competition. Strategies adopted to survive the stiff competition include rebranding and infrastructure expansion.
However, high network infrastructure cost has been the major problem as operators strive to recoup investment cost associated with building the expensive infrastructure and customers tend to suffer as it leads to high network charges and poor quality service.
This has led many experts to suggest infrastructure sharing as way of reducing cost and Ms Zhao is the latest to add her voice to the calls.
