Editorial: Networks That Never Work - Licensed 419ers

They claim it is a wonderful world, where you can express yourself everywhere you go, through networks that work. Yet, in Ghana today, no network ever works well enough to make it possible to express oneself anywhere in the land. It is understandable when subscribers of telephone services (especially mobile) are unable to access certain geographical areas as a result of inadequate infrastructure in that part of the country.

It was man that made technology, and man makes mistakes. So it follows therefore that technology can fail. However even if that happened, which should not be often, effort should be made to ensure that the triggers of those disruptive incidents do not recur.

But Ghanaians have, once upon a time, seen better quality service from some of these telecommunication service providers, and it is therefore difficult for one not to suspect they are taking the consuming public for granted. Worse still, they do not even have the courtesy to apologize to the public for their disruptive behavior. They continue expanding their subscriber base, roping in new users, whiles to the annoyance of their existing users, the quality of their services continues to deteriorate.

Their actions have generated quarrels and mistrust among business partners, friends and loved ones, because serious conversations were rudely disrupted and many attempts to reconnect failed, leading to unwarranted suspicion. Every subscriber to mobile telephony has suffered at the hands of these service providers in many ways, particularly within the last few months, when too many telephone calls are either rudely terminated or would not connect at all in the first place.

Should we begin to consider the possibility of lives lost in emergency situations just because one mobile network or other has failed to provide the subscriber with reliable service? What about people getting stranded because they could not reach help, which should have been but a phone call away? Sometimes even text messages cannot be sent. A very prominent traditional leader told a story at a public function last year of a remote village somewhere in the Eastern Region, where he saw a young mother with a baby on her back, returning from the stream with a bucket of water balanced on her head. He was amazed however to notice that the woman was carrying on a lively conversation on a mobile phone. He said he could not help but stop and ask her what network she subscribed to. He lamented that these companies had the smartest marketing techniques to convince the lowliest of people to subscribe to their networks, and yet they could not provide basic potable drinking water for such communities, even while siphoning their meager income through call tariffs. The irony of this whole saga is that while they appear not to have control over how to get their networks to function properly to earn the high tariffs they are already charging their subscribers, they continue to demonstrate their insatiable voracity. Some of these telephone service providers have resorted to acts, which should at worst earn them the title of licensed 419ers, to squeeze monies from their unsuspecting subscribers. It has become common for them to organize quizzes or raffles, laced with grand deception to rob unsuspecting subscribers of huge sums of money, on top of the already high tariffs they charge. The Business Analyst calls on the National Communications Authority (NCA) to step up its game, by demanding explanations from these telephone service providers as to what crime the consuming public has committed to deserve this shabby treatment from them. The Business Analyst thinks that this continuous fleecing at the hands of mobile telephone operators should not be tolerated in any nation without incurring the wrath of the mass of the citizenry. We cannot help but think that Ghanaians are being taken advantage of merely because we have a reputation of being a peace-loving people, otherwise how could we explain mobile phone networks whose customer service lines you can never connect to, not to mention almost non-existent emergency call services. Unfortunately for the consuming public, not many people, organizations or even the media, are ready to call these service providers to order. And the reasons are not hard to come by: the crumbs from the loot from the masses that these telecommunication service providers throw back at a few people; and the expectations from others who hope to benefit from them sooner or later, have rendered many mum. We can’t wait to see the end of this incessantly unfair treatment and therefore The Business Analyst calls on the NCA to ensure that owners of the national resource they have allocated to these service providers are treated with respect through the provision of impeccable quality service.