The National Communications Authority (NCA), on Monday, 11th March, 2019, welcomed a delegation from the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority (PURA) of Gambia on a study visit to the Authority.

The 6-member delegation comprising staff from the Gambian regulator, PURA, the Ministry of ICT and an incumbent telecommunications operator, GAMTEL are being hosted by the NCA for four (4) days.

PURA and its accompanying organisations seek to benchmark and share experiences from the NCA in the areas of Interconnection, Cost Models and Wholesale Tariffs, National and International Broadband Services, Infrastructure Sharing and Service Level Agreements amongst other emerging issues in the ICT sector.

Welcoming the delegation, the Deputy Director General for Technical Operations, Mr. Henry Kanor said governments worldwide have been working to ensure that there is access to communications services across their countries to give the needed boost for development.

He added that the Authority is moving beyond traditional regulations to explore new ways of regulating the communications industry, especially in view of the fact that the entire world is migrating to digital platforms and that there needs to be regulatory interventions which can harness the digital transactions and services being carried over and on communications services.

• Mr. Henry Kanor giving his welcome remarks Mr. Kanor said the NCA is honoured to be pegged by Gambia as a benchmark for the above-mentioned areas.

Mr. Ebrima Jammeh, Director of Core Network at PURA on behalf of the delegation said Gambia has concluded a consultancy on a cost tariff model for the African Cost to Europe fiber optic submarine cable (ACE) and ECOWAS Wide Area Network (ECOWAN) national fiber backbone.

To ensure that access to these infrastructures are provided to stakeholders in a fair and transparent manner, it was recommended that a benchmark study be done within the sub-region to gain better understanding of all the strategic and operational issues.

• Mr. Ebrima Jammeh giving his remarks on behalf of the delegation He added that NCA was chosen as a top priority destination due to its remarkable achievements in the telecommunications sector within the sub-region over the years.

Thanking management for the warm reception and the opportunity given them to tap into the experiences of the NCA, Mr Jammeh was hopeful that the visit will forge closer ties between Ghana and Gambia within the telecommunication space and beyond.