The Chief Executive Officer of MTN Ghana, Selorm Adadevoh, says data consumption in Ghana has gone up by about 20 percent after the country recorded cases of the coronavirus outbreak.
Following the pandemic, government has closed down all schools and banned public gatherings including religious activities, while several organizations have asked their staff to work from home to observe the social distancing practice to prevent the spread of the virus.
Speaking on the Citi Breakfast Show, Mr. Adadevoh explained that the increasing number of people working from home is responsible for the rise in data usage.
“Every day there is a change, it depends on really what’s happening, but somewhere between 15 and 20 percent will be a fair estimate of the increase we are seeing so far across the board,” Mr. Adadevoh said in reaction to how data usage has increased in the past few days.
He explained that the increase in data usage was expected considering the fact that a lot of people were also looking for information online from home.
“It’s fair to assume that if you have the situation we have currently with students at home, a lot of people are connecting online now. Apart from students we also have workers who are trying to work from home now. So there is a lot of emphasis on working remotely. Now what this means is you have to rely more on data services to be able to connect to remote services for different employers or educational institutions”.
Mr. Adadevoh however stated that the biggest challenge is for telcos to maintain a high quality service to consumers in times like this.
“As an operator, the biggest challenge will be how to continue to provide the right levels of capacity and service so that the experience is not deteriorated. You’ll see Facebook traffic increase significantly, and Netflix as well. These are some of the very high volumes that we see. You’ll see Youtube as well increase and of course educational sites,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Chief Executive Officer of MTN Ghana, Selorm Adadevoh, says reducing the cost of data to boost communication amidst the coronavirus pandemic, could increase traffic that will affect internet speed.
