IRATE WORKERS of Ghana Telecom in Accra yesterday resolved “to advise themselves” on what action to take if the National Communication Authority (NCA) is not able to clear the impasse between the company and SCANCOM (Spacefon) over interconnectivity rates.
This decision was taken after a tense meeting between workers and management lasting over an hour, during which customers who had business in the GT yard had to stand outside the gates as security men refused them entry.
Madam Naomi Quarcoo, GTs Divisional Women’s Coordinator for Communication Workers Union, told The Chronicle about a meeting on August 6 this year, at which the NCA was acknowledged as the agency that provides guidelines for the operation of communication services in the country.
However the NCA has not been mandated to determine interconnectivity rates for GT, apart from providing guidelines of tariffs chargeable for the provision of communication services.
GT’s concern, she said, is based on the premise that, out of the company’s interconnectivity rate which is ?600 per minute, ?320 is paid to SCANCOM, whilst SCANCOM charges ? 2,800 per minute and pays GT?280.
Also according to an interconnectivity traffic data document sighted by this paper, between GT and SCANCOM from December 2002 to May this year, for a total of 183, 406,252 minutes of calls from GT to SCANCOM, GT is expected to pay SCANCOM about ?58.7 billion, whilst SCANCOM will pay GT only ?52.1 billion in interconnectivity traffic settlement.
An analysis of GT’s traffic with other mobile operators follows a similar trend. For the first quarter of 2003 for example, GT has to pay Mobitel ?6.7 billion whilst Mobitel pays GT ?113 billion.
The document stated that for every 25 customers who call from GT to Spacefon, only one calls from Spacefon to GT.
According to Mad. Quarcoo interconnectivity rate was introduced in April 1996 when the amount was equivalent to US$0.37, but it is now worth only US$0.7 due to the devaluation of the cedi.
Meanwhile mobile operators have pegged their rate to the dollar, and their charges keep appreciating as the cedi depreciates. This, she said, has resulted in the wide gap between GT’s interconnectivity rate of ?600 and the charges of the mobile service operators.
She pointed out that the disparity in the rates is due to government’s control over GT charges. To rectify this and protect the company’s business interest, GT needs to raise its interconnectivity call charge to a rate comparable to the rate charged by the mobile service operators. GT is therefore demanding that the minister of Communications and Technology and the NCA give GT the opportunity to determine its own charges as other communication operators do.
Madam Quarcoo said GT could not continue to pay huge amounts to SCANCOM, so they should be allowed to apply the originator-takes-all system.
She asked, “How can we have a wage bill of around ?9.2 billion, and then pay SCANCOM over ?10 billion?”
This, she said, means that half of GT’s revenue is paid to them, adding that whilst mobile phones are not maintained, GT spends money to service customer fixed lines.
“We have to disconnect customers to enable us pay our salaries. It is due to these things that customers accuse us of inefficiency; the fact is that the money is just not there, we are paying all the money to Scancom.”
