Citi Business News has gathered the National Communications Authority (NCA) will soon step in to save local companies with the 4G license in the country from collapse.
Majority of data companies awarded Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) licenses in the 2500 to 2690 MHz band have been saddled with financial and operational challenges.
The NCA issued Blue Telecom, Surfline Limited and GoldKey Properties Limited with the BWA license each for paired frequency configuration, and G-Kwiknet Limited won a license for unpaired configuration valid for a period of 10 years.
BWA licenses are intended to provide wireless broadband connectivity to subscribers and licensees are authorized to develop and operate broadband networks to provide nationwide BWA services.
Speaking to Citi Business News the Director – General of the NCA William Mathew Tevie said the authority will encourage mergers of the BWA’s with the large telcos to help them deploy their service.
“The regulator is supposed to be fair and transparent in whatever it does. We gave them the licenses, we gave them stringent deployment plan and we have noticed that it has been very difficult for them to deploy.
I must admit or you must know that to deploy a spectrum like this and a service like that all over the country you need approximately 50 to 100 million dollars which is difficult. So I think some of them are having financial difficulties in deploying.
We know that they are trying to see if they can do some mergers and all that. In fact the first batch of the BWA licenses we gave only Surfline has been able to deploy within Accra and we gave them license to go into the other regions but it’s been difficult for them to do that.
It’s all about having deep pockets to be able to deploy such a thing.”
He added that ‘the NCA has noticed that the telcos, the big MNO’s are able to deploy such infrastructure in the country, so we are going to encourage mergers among the telcos and the BWA’s to see how they can get the synergies from each other to deploy such a service.
Because one single entity will find difficult to deploy such a network that way’. Director – General of the NCA William Mathew Tevie stated.
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By: Norvan Acquah – Hayford/citibusinessnews.com/Ghana
