Vodafone says future of Ghana operations bright

Vodafone says it is optimistic about the future of its Ghana operations despite the many challenges that need to be addressed in the sector.

It said Ghana as a country on the move and with the support of the public authorities; Vodafone could help lead the digital progress of the country and customers.

“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,” Mr Vivek Badrinath, Vodafone Regional CEO for Africa Middle East and Asia-Pacific has said.

He said Vodafone was ready to meet the growing competition in the telecommunication sector and was ready to overcome with excellent customer service and products.

Mr Badrinath said Vodafone would continue to play a significant role in the economy as it has done in the past 10 years, providing employment directly and indirectly to over 500,000 people.

He said he expected the company to remain relevant into the future and to become one of the companies that mattered.

“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,” he added.

On Vodafone’s 10 years anniversary, Mr Badrinath said a lot of investment had been done in the business for growth while the brand is well regarded by customers.

He said the investment had led to significant funding into the business and that was one of the points being addressed with our partner shareholder government.

He said it was time Vodafone manage to get onto the 4G bandwagon to be able to compete and to utilise the efficiency of the 4G technology to deliver superior services to clients at a better cost.

“We would like to do 4G and we think it is good for the country. It is good because more and more devices are 4G enabled,” he said.

In this direction, he said, Vodafone was in discussion with the government and awaiting their response on the issue of spectrum.

“The reasonable cost for spectrum is in the public interest because while you spent 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 discussion with government on debt restructuring, Mr Badrinath said Vodafone and government were in agreement that the restructuring has to happen.

“So we are going through that process in 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.

Ms Yolanda Cuba said fibre cuts was a major concern to Vodafone as it leads to slow connections and cuts away communities from being reached by callers.

She said vandalism of telecommunication infrastructure was not acceptable and urged the communities that benefitted from telecommunication infrastructure to help police it.