‘Blame poor service for low MNP penetration’

A member of Parliament’s Committee on Communications, Bright Demordzi, says bad quality of service among telecom operators is responsible for the low patronage of the mobile number portability (MNP) system.

Mr. Demordzi said the sector regulator, National Communication Authority (NCA), must not hesitate to sanction telecom operators which default in meeting quality-of-service benchmarks.

“The NCA must live up to expectations; they must crack the whip on the telecom operators. That is the most important thing. Their failure to impose stiffer punishment on telecom operators is a contributory factor to the low patronage of MNP,” he said.

Mobile phone penetration has long crossed the 100 percent threshold as figures released by the NCA indicate that the six telecom operators possess over 27.2 million subscribers.

Introduced in 2011, mobile number portability is a permanent system that allows mobile telephony service customers to move from one service provider to another while retaining their old mobile number.

Two years after MNP’s introduction, about 910,000 subscribers -- representing 3 percent of the estimated active mobile lines -- have been successfully ported.

Mr. Demordzi said the service is hugely undersubscribed because of the widespread bad quality of service among the telecom operators.

“Because all the operators are not performing, MNP is even not working. The quality of service is bad; so what you need to do is to go and buy three to four SIMs. That is why nobody is moving. Nobody is porting because if you port, it is useless,” he lamented.

The NCA, nonetheless, has been on a fining spree -- intermittently sanctioning operators that default in meeting regulatory quality-of-service benchmarks.

The regulator slapped a total of GH¢1million in fines on all the six telecom companies in the country for their inability to meet the required Quality of Service (QoS) standards for a greater part of the second quarter of this year.

MTN, the market leader in the industry, suffered the heaviest fine as it was asked to pay GH¢350,000 for defaulting on call congestion and call set-up time obligations in the Greater Accra, Upper East, Upper West and Northern Regions.

Tigo, the third-biggest network operator, was fined GH¢250,000.

Its offence was for defaulting on call set-up time obligation in the Western and Greater Accra Regions as well as call congestion obligation in Upper East, Upper West and Northern Regions.

Expresso, the smallest of the six in terms of market share, was fined GH¢200,000 for defaulting on call-congestion obligations in the Western, Upper West, Upper East and Northern Regions.

Glo, the latest entrant to the industry, was fined GH¢100,000 for defaulting call set-up time and call completion obligations in the Brong Ahafo Region.

Airtel, which is the fourth largest in the industry, was fined GH¢50,000 for defaulting call-congestion obligation in the Northern Region only, while Vodafone, the second-largest by market share, was asked to pay GH¢ 50,000 for defaulting on call set-up time obligation, also in the Northern Region.