Business News of Friday, 23 March 2018

Source: ghananewsagency.org

MTN to inject $144M into network infrastructure in 2018

MTN Ghana Foundation is a subsidiary of MTN Ghana MTN Ghana Foundation is a subsidiary of MTN Ghana

Ghana's leading telecommunication giant, MTN is set to inject over $144 million of capital expenditure towards expanding quality network services.

MTN has a market share of about 17.8 million mobile subscribers therefore it was important that the company invested in its operations to meet the growing customer demands.

Mrs Pala Asiedu Ofori, the Acting Senior Corporate Services Executive, said this during an interaction with the media in the Central Region in Cape Coast on Wednesday to discuss the achievement of the organization in 2017 as well as its corporate strategic vision for 2018.

She said her outfit was focused on improving customer experience by investing in network improvement, hiring experienced staff, providing quality service, improving distribution networks and bringing on board more value-added services for voice calls and data services across the country.

As part of initiatives for this year, MTN would also roll out 230 new sites for extension, 200 rural sites extension, 695 km of fibre, 1,100 3G new sites and fibre-to-home extension to 20,000 homes.

Additionally, the company has rolled out new services such as social bundles and yellow birthday, digitized bill payments, customer feedback mechanisms, increased service points and data packages to make internet usage more convenient to customers.

She reminded businesses of the organization's varying portfolios, their communications solutions, an initiative promising a world-class, limitless and cutting-edge business communications platform, to boost the development of small, medium and large enterprises in Ghana.

Christened "MTN Business", was dedicated to converging Information and Communications Technology (ICT) to provide a one-stop-shop for all ICT needs of individuals and corporate entities with innovative, robust and cost-effective communications solutions.

The platform offered products and services including, leased lines (international and national), dedicated internet, shared IP connect service, VPN over Mobile, Wi-Fi Hotspots, Co-Location Hosting services, Hosted Messaging and Collaboration and Cloud Computing and Virtualization.

She said MTN has invested in technological infrastructure including three Data Centres in Eastern, Greater Accra and Ashanti Regions with high capacity to support business with Data Recovery Sites, Servers, Rack Spaces, Backup systems and to meet the ICT needs of organizations that sign unto the platform.

She called on Ghanaian businesses to harness the advantages of the solutions offered by MTN to promote the growth of business in Ghana.

As part of the company's strong commitments to its corporate social responsibilities, MTN in collaboration with UNICEF has embarked upon a programme dubbed "The Agoo Project Performance" which sought to use a multi-lingual mobile platform to engage and educate Ghanaians on to pick issues of national concern such as education, sanitation water, hygiene and Child Abuse.

She assured that the company would continue its efforts to strengthen its position on the non-voice service and maintain and improve customer experience.

The Senior Corporate Affairs Executive mentioned fibre cuts and interruptions as one major problem facing telecommunication industry in Ghana.

Mr Teddy Hayford-Acquah, Central and Western Regional Head of Technical Services, said his outfit in partnership with Ghana Investment Fund for Electronic Communications (GIFEC) were extending mobile telephone service coverage to cover rural communities under a Rural Telephony Project.

He said the project was part of efforts being made to achieve universal mobile telephone service coverage throughout Ghana and increase telephone subscribership to as many citizens as possible.