Friday 4th April , 2014 5:23 pm
Some Consumer groups have launched scathing attacks at the various telecommunication companies in Ghana.
The consumer groups have described as ridiculous various answers given in response to questions of poor network services by representatives of the various telecommunication companies.
This comes after the organization of the fifth breakfast knowledge forum aimed at enlightening subscribers about the industry organized by the Ghana chamber of telecommunications.
Speaking to Citi Business News, a member of the consumer action front Dauda Mohammed Suru said, ‘their performance is very abysmal all of them together’.
According to the CEO of the Consumer Protection Agency (CPA), Kofi Kapito the posture of the telcos is unacceptable.
He said, “Unfortunately they came to sell us their story, this is a platform that could have been used positively, the answers they gave for me were funny”
The total mobile voice subscriber’s base in Ghana as at April, 2013 was more than 26 million.
Across the country various mobile phone users have raised issues with the poor services rendered by telecommunication companies in the country.
These include call drops, call breaks, network congestion and internet interruptions.
A representative of one of the telecos explained why calls drop, saying,” there are varied reasons why call drops will occur and the reason maybe device specific, maybe your subscription status or maybe the network itself”.
On general poor network services and increasing complaints about difficulties in reaching people on their phones or making calls the Telcos attributed this to their smart phones, explaining that,” We run lots of applications on our smart phones, the smart phones are serving as PC’s and they may freeze sometimes, so if you try reaching this phone you may get the notification that the phone is switched off”.
There have also been some complains about poor internet services by Tigo between 6 pm to 9 pm.
After acknowledging the situation the representative of tigo attributed it to the rampant fiber cuts, especially in the Western corridors.
Some subscribers have complained in the past of loosing airtime credits without any explanation.
According to the telecommunication companies, second hand phones might be the cause of this.
A telco representative explained that, “Apart from buying phones from the side streets, we also have a lot of second hand phones that come from the UK or the US, across board a lot of those phones actually ‘steal’ credit”.
By: Rabiu Alhassan/citifmonline.com/Ghana