Customers of telecommunication companies (telcos) will enjoy better services in the future, following a 10-year telecommunication master plan being rolled out by the Ghana Grid Company (GRIDCo) to enable the telcos to provide more reliable services for their customers.
Under the plan, GRIDCo is making fibre optic cables available along its grid lines to offer the best connection service to the telcos.
In an interview with the Daily Graphic in Tema last Wednesday, Mr William Amuna, the Chief Executive of GRIDCo, said under the GRIDCo Telecommunication (GRIDTel) project, the telcos would no longer have to dig the ground to lay their cables, which often got damaged by vehicles, causing system fluctuation to the operators.
Poor services
There is a growing public anger at the poor services being rendered by the country’s telcos. The poor services, characterised by call drops, call breaks, network congestion, Internet interruptions and disappearing data, have compelled some users to subscribe to more than one network.
Although the complaints are nothing new, what has aggravated public anger is the fact that penalties imposed by the National Communications Authority (NCA) on the companies in the past did not seem to have any impact on quality of service.
Fruitless
Between November 2011 and 2015, the NCA fined the operators more than GH¢2 million for various offences that affected service quality.
While industry players maintain that challenges confronting the telecom industry, including the breaking of cables by contractors, stealing of cables, frequent power outages and high fees charged by landowners, account for the problems, that excuse does not appear to sit well with mobile phone users, as they call for stiffer punishment for telecom operators who flout the regulations.
In addition to the GRIDCo making fibre optic cables available along its grid lines to offer the best connection service to the telcos, the company says it is building a new control room to serve as back-up to its operations, considering the global threat of system hacking.
Control systems
Already, new control systems have been built at the Takoradi and the Aflao sub-stations, while a whole new sub-station was inaugurated at Kpando on Tuesday, May 23, 2017 to serve the Kpando, Kadjebi, Nkwanta and adjoining communities along the Oti River in the Volta Region.
Mr Amuna stressed that GRIDCo was presently undergoing a sub-station reliability enhancement project aimed at replacing obsolete machinery to improve efficiency and reduce transmission losses.
“The GRIDCo Centre of Excellence project is also another initiative we have embarked on with the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) which will be funded by the Korea Eximbank at an estimated cost of $22.5 million,” he added.
The centre, he said, would offer customised training to staff of the company, as well as students who might want to look for opportunities within the power sector.
“The project will also enhance Ghana’s status as an educational hub among West African Power Pool (WAPP) countries,” he stressed.
Electricity market
Mr Amuna also said plans were underway to create a wholesale electricity market where electricity trading could be done within the sub-region.
The market, which would be similar to a stock market, he said, would offer all players in the sector bids to buy and electricity could also be offered through offers to sell, among other issues.
The WAPP, he said, was spearheading the project, while GRIDCo had also initiated the processes for developing the rules, and expressed the hope that those initiatives would offer a better solution to the country’s power challenges.
