Government to Revamp Telecom Sector

Mr Felix Owusu-Agyapong, Minister of Transport and Communications, on Tuesday said steps are under way to revamp national communication policies and programmes to ensure that increased telecom infrastructure lead to improved accessibility to telecom services nation-wide.

He said to ensure that policy objectives aimed at facilitating rapid access to telecom services throughout the country within the shortest possible time remained on track, suitable strategies, which will address the deficiencies of the past and also reflect the changes in the environment including technology, will soon be implemented.

Mr Owusu-Agyapong said this at the opening of the Third African Telecom Summit in Accra, organised by the government and Spectrum International Limited, a Ghanaian-based private Information Technology (IT) firm.

The three-day summit, under the theme: "Universal Access and Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in Africa - Strategies for effective development," is to evolve a programme of action on how to increase access to telecom services in African countries.

The Minister noted that the five-year exclusivity to the provision of fixed telecom services granted to Ghana Telecom (GT) and Western Telesystems Limited (Westel) will come to and end in 2002. Steps are, therefore, being taken to announce the government's position on the exclusivity policy by the third quarter of this year.

The Minister said the move to revamp the telecom sector was motivated, among other factors, by the fact that four years after the establishment of the National Communication Authority (NCA) as a regulatory body in the telecom sector, access to telecom services in the country still falls below expectation.

He said the revamping exercise would, therefore, focus on strengthening the regulatory agency, developing human capacity, deployment countrywide and the promotion of value-added service.

"For instance, pilot programmes to promote access to computers in schools will be re-packaged as a national programme to be implemented in phases," he said.

"The private sector will also be encouraged to assist the government in extending the use of their ICT training facilities to the public sector."

Mr Owusu-Agyapong reiterated government's intention to have all public officers become computer literate in order to facilitate the use of the Internet in the public sector.

The Minister, like other speakers at the summit, noted that in spite of the billions of dollars invested into telecom infrastructure in African countries, accessibility to telecom services is still relatively very low.

He attributed the disparity to the relatively inadequate infrastructure compared to the population of African countries and poor quality service delivery of the few telecom industries.

"This situation is invariably due to inadequacy of policies, weak regulatory environment as well as the lack of resources for infrastructure development," he said.

Mr Owusu-Agyapong urged his colleague African ministers of communications to be committed to the harmonisation of policies in the sub-region with the view to effectively addressing the problems of infrastructure development, access to market, financing and technology.

"The challenge for us is to create a favourable environment that would attract investors," he said.

Mr Yoshio Utsumi, Secretary General of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), said while Africa's population increases, the digital divide gap between Africa and the developed world also widens.

He said available statistics indicate that currently only about 28 per cent of Africans use fixed telephones, 14 per cent use mobile phones and an estimated 7.6 per cent use the Internet.

Mr Utsumi noted international calls between developed and developing countries cost more than between two developed countries, saying that a call from Geneva to Ghana for instance cost about 13 times more than from Geneva to the United States.

He said to effectively address these disparities and bridge the digital divide, the ITU would hold a telecom summit between November 12 and 16 to establish common grounds that would inform the UN World Summit on the Information Society slated for 2003 to combat the digital divide problem.

He urged manufacturers of telecommunication infrastructure to develop new rural friendly, affordable equipment to make it easy for rural dwellers to access telecom service.

Mr Shola Taylor, Chief Executive Officer of UK-based Kemilink International Limited, called on African governments to fashion their communication with accessibility, capacity, continuity, reliability and affordability (ACCRA) of telecom service in mind.

Over 100 participants, including 16 African ministers of communications, ICT experts, policy makers and industrialists from ITU and African Telecommunication Union (ATU) member states are attending