Citi Business News has gathered that the second 4G spectrum being sold by government may never be acquired by the telecom operators in the country.
Discussions with operators in the telecom industry reveal that most of them will shy away from acquiring the license because of its high cost.
The telecom operators argue that the price being offered by government in acquiring a 4G license is extremely high and not in the best interest of their companies taking their financial strength into consideration.
In an exclusive interview with Head of Business desk at Citi FM Vivian Kai Lokko, the Chief Executive Officer of Vodafone Ghana, Yolanda Cuba said her outfit will launch into 4G operations when they believe the price offered for it will benefit the company as well as consumers.
“I think at some point in time we will roll out 4G; the question around is whether the price at which the available slot is being offered is actually market related and whether it is a fair price to pay at this point in time,” Yolanda Cuba said.
She added, “We do not believe this is what the situation is because even when MTN paid for the slot they said it was not at a market related price.”
MTN Ghana which acquired the first 4G license did so at a price of 67.5 million dollars, a figure that was exceedingly high for the other bidders to compete with.
MTN, together with three other companies; Surfline, Goldkey and Migson communications all submitted applications for the spectrum but only MTN was able to cough up the floor price for the spectrum which was 67.5 million dollars.
Meanwhile touching on the reason for slow data penetration in the country, Yolanda Cuba said the kind of mobile phones used by a majority of the population accounts largely for the slow pace of data penetration.
“The first thing that data penetration is dependent on is how pervasive your network is , the second thing is the kind of mobile phones people have, a lot of people still use 2 and 3 mobile phone so even while there may be 4G in the system people are not getting the full experience”.
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By: Anita Arthur/citibusinessnews.com/Ghana
