Mobile phone dealers to check inferior products - NCA

Accra, July 8, GNA - Mr Bernard Forson Jnr, Deputy Director General of the National Communication Authority (NCA), on Thursday called for a cartel for mobile phone dealers to brainstorm and develop a standard and rating measures to check the influx of poor quality phones into the Ghanaian market.

"Even though it is difficult to access good quality phones and accessories, it is important that the dealers come together to look at the possibilities of developing a standard or rating measures to ensure that consumers are not cheated always," he said.

Mr Forson Jnr. was briefing the Media on an International Mobile Phone Accessories Exhibition and Conference to be held in Accra from August 11 to August 15 under the theme: "Converging Mobile Phone Technology for Socio-Economic Development in Africa".

The NCA Deputy Director General said the best people in the industry should regulate the market and its prospects since they were in a position to determine the quality of products and help to do away with inferior ones.

"As dealers you have to make sure that the consuming public need not be engineers to identify what is good quality mobile phone as the market is becoming sophisticated every now and then," Mr Forson Jnr said.

On the issue of interconnectivity among the cellular phone operators, Mr Forson Jnr said there had been much improvement because of the cost framework that realigned the rates of cellular operators the NCA adopted to regulate the system.

"There is a significant harmony today for the over one million access lines currently in the country".

Mr Forson announced that the NCA was at the moment pursuing further liberalisation programme noting that the enactment of a telecommunication law would guarantee investment certainty.

Mr Kofy Adega, Executive Director, Universal Acceptance Limited, Dealers in Mobile Phones and its Accessories, told the Ghana News Agency that it would be difficult to rate phones because of the rate at which the inferior ones were flooding the market.

He said the Mobile Dealers Association about three years ago considered the matter but it was realised that most of the dealers were not too comfortable with the idea.