Telcos are doing well despite poor services - Andah

A former top marketing executive with leading telecom companies (Glo, MTN and Airtel) George Andah, says the telecom companies operating in the country have so far performed quite creditably despite concerns about poor quality of service.

Mr. George Andah, the renowned marketer turned politician, says there has been significant growth of the industry particularly in the area of job creation and the introduction of new products and services.

Having played significant roles in the past to improve the performance of some of the telcos, he believes there is still more room for improvement.

Mr. Andah said on TV3's Hot Issues programme, "I think they are doing well. Obviously, the shift is from voice to data services and you can see the excitement that's happening in data. Some are doing well and others are also trying to do the catch-up. The industry is doing quite exciting and it's booming. The telcos are providing a lot for the average Ghanaian. The fact that there is an extremely convenient means of communication has improved productivity significantly. They have provided a lot of employment directly and indirectly. If you look at the CSR almost all the telcos are involved. They have also grown the music industry and they even have some good partnership with MUSIGA. They have done a lot for Ghana in terms of taxes. When I use to be at MTN Ghana for instance MTN use to be the highest tax payer" he noted.

"There are complaints about the quality of service and I am not going to defend them, but there are times they have serious challenges. But I believe that the telcos' services have changed significantly but the poor services is also probably driven a lot by the power challenges we are having now because none of the cell sites were conditioned to run for so long on generators. I remember in the past almost every other week there were fiber cuts and so there have been some challenges with quality of service but I believe that to a large extent the quality of service in Ghana is great".

Mr. Andah is also of the view that the National Communications Authority, NCA, as a regulator has improved on its oversight responsibility in an effort to improve quality.

"I think the regulator has done quite a lot and the telcos have also been extremely responsible to use service quality as one of the differentiators to attract customers to themselves. I agree with you because the customer will always ask for more and it's the customers' right to always ask for quality. I believe the telcos too are working at it".