Ghana Telecom has laid blame on some corpo-rate bodies and Internet Services Providers (ISP's) for the pressure its infrastructure is been put under.

In an official reaction to Public Agenda's last week front-page story: "Ghana Telecom heads for crash," they accused the corporate bodies who sometimes have their own intranet like the Ashanti Goldfields Corporation (AGC) and ISPs of ceasing their switching for hours on-end when they go online.

GT said some of their (GT) switches have burnt out precisely because of the activities of the ISPs and these companies.

They said there was an undue over dependency on the Ghana Telecom from the ISPs and corporate bodies. They asked the corporate bodies and the ISP's to build their own lines to ease their system of some of the stress.

Public Agenda's front-page story said the country's communication industry was heading for a crash if the present infrastructure of the main operator - Ghana Telecom is not upgraded as soon as possible.

The story reasoned that the users of the telephone infrastructure, which was designed for telephony, have over the period been changing to internet use thus creating a jam. The traffic could collapse GT's facilities if they are not improved quickly.

But GT officials in their reaction said a jam was not likely. GT said they have modified their system to meet the requirements of the changing users.

They outlined what steps they have taken: This includes systems that will enhance their services, such as, the Intelligent Networks and the ISDN services. Intelligent Networks include services such as the Free Phone, the Prepaid card services and the Premium rate.

They also said an optical fibre cable network to link nine exchanges in Accra is under construction, and will be complete by the first quarter of 2002. This will cater for the new demand increases they said.

Aside that, the traffic to outside the country which hither to was via satellite will be replaced by a sub-marine cable link (stat3).

Officials of Ghana Telecom who reacted to Public Agenda's story included Dickson Oduro -Nyanig, Chief Network Officer, Network Services, Thomas Akon-Mensah, Senior General Manager, Network Management and Operation and Johnnie Tetteh-Addy, head of Corporate Communications.