MTN Ghana Chief Executive Officer Stephen Blewett said Thursday that the company’s Significant Market Power (SMP) designation is not a regulatory burden but a mandate to lead Ghana’s telecom sector into the 5G era.
Speaking at MTN Ghana’s 30th anniversary celebrations in Accra, Blewett responded directly to remarks by Communications Minister Samuel Nartey George on the heightened expectations attached to MTN’s dominant market position.
“We should not see it as something negative but as a badge of honour,” he said, adding that the designation signals a duty to act as the sector’s anchor and lead from the front.
The statement carries real strategic weight. MTN currently holds close to 79 percent of Ghana’s mobile subscriber market, a share that has drawn scrutiny from both the National Communications Authority (NCA) and the Ministry of Communications, Digital Technology and Innovations. Rather than distance itself from that reality, the CEO embraced it as an obligation.
The government plans to auction 5G spectrum in the 3.5 gigahertz (GHz) and 26 GHz bands in 2026 through a competitive national bidding process. MTN has signalled it intends to compete, and Blewett confirmed the company would prioritise rapid, inclusive deployment if it secures spectrum, with coverage deliberately extended beyond urban centres.
His vision for 5G moves attention away from technical specifications toward the services the network will power. Blewett argued that the real dividend of next generation connectivity is its capacity to underpin artificial intelligence (AI) driven services across agriculture, healthcare, education and enterprise. In his reading, most consumers never experience network generations as such. What they register is what those networks make possible.
To fund that transition, MTN has committed $1.1 billion in capital investment over the next three years, with $380 million earmarked for 2026 alone. The plan includes approximately 800 new network sites this year to strengthen nationwide coverage and quality of service.
Blewett also acknowledged the financial asymmetry the company manages in the Ghanaian market, where infrastructure costs are denominated in foreign currency while revenue is earned locally. He described that tension as a known and accepted feature of a long term commitment, pointing to three decades of uninterrupted investment as evidence of the company’s position.
Beyond connectivity, he identified fintech as a growth pillar, with mobile money services evolving from basic transfers into savings products, loans and broader financial tools that extend formal financial access to communities historically excluded from the banking system. MTN is also directing investment toward solar powered infrastructure to reduce its environmental footprint.
The SMP framing is significant not just as corporate communication but as a signal of how MTN intends to engage regulators and the public as the spectrum auction approaches. Claiming market leadership as a duty, rather than contesting the designation, positions the company as a willing partner in the government’s target of 70 percent 5G population coverage by March 2027.
