Communications Minister Sam George’s recent ultimatum to Ghana’s telecom operators to significantly improve service quality or face regulatory sanctions has sparked widespread discussion. While the directive responds to legitimate consumer frustrations, call drops, buffering, and patchy coverage, even in urban areas, it also exposes deeper economic and infrastructural challenges within the sector. The Promise and …
Telecom Accountability and the Digital Economy: Enforcing Service Quality as a Business Imperative
Communications Minister Sam George’s recent ultimatum to Ghana’s telecom operators to significantly improve service quality or face regulatory sanctions has sparked widespread discussion. While the directive responds to legitimate consumer frustrations, call drops, buffering, and patchy coverage, even in urban areas, it also exposes deeper economic and infrastructural challenges within the sector.
The Promise and the Problem
At the core of the Minister’s announcement is a promise: the government will provide additional spectrum to ease network congestion and support performance improvements. Spectrum, often called the lifeblood of mobile connectivity, is crucial. If allocated transparently, affordably, and on time, it could indeed help improve service quality.
However, the telecom sector’s challenges go beyond operator neglect. Ghana’s telecom operators face rising operational costs, inconsistent licensing regimes, unpredictable spectrum policies, and delayed infrastructure rollouts, all while being pressured to lower data prices. This disconnect between regulatory expectations and operational realities risks perpetuating cycles of underperformance.
Infrastructure Delays and Policy Gaps
The NextGenInfraco (NGIC), established as a neutral shared infrastructure provider to accelerate nationwide 4G and 5G deployment and reduce costs, has yet to meet its rollout deadlines. Meanwhile, private operators are threatened with sanctions for poor service, highlighting a policy imbalance.
Similarly, the Significant Market Power (SMP) policy aimed at curbing MTN’s dominance and boosting competition has failed to deliver. While MTN faces pricing restrictions, smaller operators like AirtelTigo and Vodafone (now Telecel) have not received the investment support or spectrum access needed to compete effectively. The result: policy uncertainty, discouraged investment, and little improvement in competition or consumer outcomes.
The Risk of Overregulation Without Enablement
Ghana risks repeating past mistakes by overregulating without providing the necessary enabling environment. Demands for better service must be matched by government accountability—reducing regulatory friction, offering spectrum on clear and competitive terms, and ensuring infrastructure projects like NGIC are commercially viable and scalable.
The Minister’s call for operators to offer more value without lowering prices—effectively pushing for larger data bundles amid rising input costs and weak infrastructure—may exacerbate network congestion unless capacity is expanded.
Aligning Ambition with Reality
Ghana’s digital economy depends on reliable, affordable, and future-ready telecom infrastructure. Headlines from the Minister’s ultimatum may energize public debate, but the real work lies in fixing policy foundations, restoring investor trust, and aligning public ambitions with private-sector realities.
Only through balanced regulation, transparent spectrum allocation, and effective infrastructure deployment can Ghana’s telecom sector deliver the quality service its citizens and economy demand.
Credit: IMANI’s Criticality Analysis of Key Economic Issues, May 26–30, 2025
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