Vodafone poised to lead telecom industry

Vodafone Ghana has indicated its preparedness to take the Ghanaian telecommunications industry by storm through the introduction of excellent customer service and products in the near future.

Vivek Badrinath, Vodafone Regional Chief Executive Officer (CEO) for Africa Middle East and Asia-Pacific, who disclosed this at a media interaction recently in Accra, said Vodafone Ghana is ready to overcome the growing competition in the telecommunication sector despite the challenges that beset it.

“We want to be the centre of innovation, bringing new services and have the opportunity to sell more data and hope all the spectrum questions would be behind us. “We would have capacity to serve customers with data and internet…and I believe that there are a lot of things that can help improve society, corporations, public service like utilities to ensure less wastage and better efficiency.

“We will be strong in the advice side and bring solutions, and on consumer side bringing services and reducing cost.”

According to him, “We are very optimistic about the future and the dynamics under the leadership of the management. We are optimistic even though there are many changes and challenges we need to address around the sector.”

Commenting on the 10th anniversary celebration of the company, Mr Badrinath said Vodafone, which employs directly and indirectly over 500,000 people, would remain relevant in Ghana by investing more in its business for growth.

On the issue of latching onto the 4G spectrum, he said the company was waiting for government’s response to the request so it could utilise the efficiency of the 4G technology to deliver superior services to clients at a better cost.

“It’s good because more and more devices are 4G enabled,” he said.

The company is currently in discussions with the government on the matter.

He further opined: “The reasonable cost for spectrum is in the public interest, because while you spend money on spectrum you also need to invest money in deployment. So the more a spectrum is at accessible cost the easier it will be for the company to deploy quickly,” he said.

On the company’s debt restructuring, Mr Badrinath said Vodafone and government were in agreement and feverishly working on that.

“So we are going through that process in an open and transparent manner and in a friendly way with government and that is a proper way to go about it because this is a company that needs a strong balance sheet to grow and government and ourselves realized that this needs to be addressed,” Mr Badrinath said.

“However, we are not yet there, and it is complicated because is a conversion of a shareholder debt in such a way that the balance sheet is not burdened but the debt,” he said.

Yolanda Cuba, CEO of Vodafone Ghana, in a remark, complained about the rampant fibre cuts in recent times at some locations, saying that was a major worry to the company as such acts disrupt internet services to affected communities.

She condemned the vandalism of its telecommunication infrastructure.