Communications Workshop Opens In Accra

A five-day Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisations (CTO) Competition Policy Workshop opened in Accra on Monday with a call for the development of an effective solution for Interconnect Systems to prevent Revenue leakage and minimise interconnection fraud.

Major Joseph R. K. Tandoh (rtd), Acting Director General, National Communications Authority (NCA), who made the call, urged member countries to adopt strategies that would identify favourable criteria for achieving interconnect contract.

The workshop is aimed at addressing interconnection issues with special reference to fix to mobile operations, development and delivery of fundamental economic issues for regulators, which includes competition policy, costs and pricing and finance for regulators.

Its being attended by about 30 Executives of Telecommunication Operators and Regulation Officials from the Commonwealth and other international telecommunication bodies including Building Digital Organisation (BDO) and CTO.

Major Tandoh said; "for competition to thrive, interconnection issues need to be addressed with an effective linkage that would incorporates local loop unbundling, collocation, resale and number portability into its operations."

Other strategies he mentioned included upgrading the interconnect system to support the migration to Internet Provider (IP) and inter-working PSTN-Based system with packet-based interconnect solutions. He said such systems would enable Circuit-Switched and Packet-Switched Interconnect Traffic to be handled by the same systems.

On the challenges of competition as the country liberalized its telecommunication sector, the NCA Director said the nation needed to develop and adopt strategies to complement the competition policy in the contemporary telecommunication markets within the Commonwealth. He said the Commonwealth workshop would assist developing countries to develop a road map of how to make the best use of sector-specific regulation and competition.

Ms Isabel Stewart, CTO, BDO Programme Manager, said the United Kingdom had voted eight million pounds for the initiation of programmes over a three- year period for the Information and Communication Technology industry within the Commonwealth.

She said the programme would cover core support for new regulatory institutions in developing countries, organisation of workshops for key policy-makers, development of effective strategies for e-commerce and e-governance within developing countries and support for the development of national and regional ICT strategies.