Ghana Plans To Relax Telecom Licensing Rules To Lower Data Costs (bloomberg.com) 10
Ghana plans to broaden the scope of its telecommunications licenses so mobile operators can have more spectrum available for internet use, lowering data costs for consumers. From a report: Ghana currently sells licenses that are spectrum-specific "and the technology is tied to the spectrum that you can use," said Communications Minister-Designate Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, who took questions from lawmakers Monday as part of her reappointment process. After the change, it won't "matter whether its 2G, 3G or 4G spectrum that you have, you can use whatever available technology there is on (your available spectrum) to deliver the service that you want," she said, referring to the technologies used for voice calls and Internet services. The West African nation's move follows an industry push to get more governments to make spectrum licenses technology- and service-neutral so mobile operators can be flexible, without paying high charges to change the use of their spectrum.
First joke (Score:3, Funny)
.... an Austrian, an Azerbaijani, a Bahamian, a Bahraini, a Bangladeshi, a Barbadian, a Barbudans, a Batswanan, a Belarusian, a Belgian, a Belizean, a Beninese, a Bhutanese, a Bolivian, a Bosnian, a Brazilian, a Brit, a Bruneian, a Bulgarian, a Burkinabe, a Burmese, a Burundian, a Cambodian, a Cameroonian, a Canadian, a Cape Verdean, a Central African, a Chadian, a Chilean, a Chinese, a Colombian, a Comoran, a Congolese, a Costa Rican, a Croatian, a Cuban, a Cypriot, a Czech, a Dane, a Djibouti, a Dominican, a Dutchman, an East Timorese, an Ecuadorean, an Egyptian, an Emirian, an Equatorial Guinean, an Eritrean, an Estonian, an Ethiopian, a Fijian, a Filipino, a Finn, a Frenchman, a Gabonese, a Gambian, a Georgian, a German, a Ghanaian, a Greek, a Grenadian, a Guatemalan, a Guinea-Bissauan, a Guinean, a Guyanese, a Haitian, a Herzegovinian, a Honduran, a Hungarian, an I-Kiribati, an Icelander, an Indian, an Indonesian, an Iranian, an Iraqi, an Irishman, an Israeli, an Italian, an Ivorian, a Jamaican, a Japanese, a Jordanian, a Kazakhstani, a Kenyan, a Kittian and Nevisian, a Kuwaiti, a Kyrgyz, a Laotian, a Latvian, a Lebanese, a Liberian, a Libyan, a Liechtensteiner, a Lithuanian, a Luxembourger, a Macedonian, a Malagasy, a Malawian, a Malaysian, a Maldivan, a Malian, a Maltese, a Marshallese, a Mauritanian, a Mauritian, a Mexican, a Micronesian, a Moldovan, a Monacan, a Mongolian, a Moroccan, a Mosotho, a Motswana, a Mozambican, a Namibian, a Nauruan, a Nepalese, a New Zealander, a Nicaraguan, a Nigerian, a Nigerien, a North Korean, a Northern Irishman, a Norwegian, an Omani, a Pakistani, a Palauan, a Palestinian, a Panamanian, a Papua New Guinean, a Paraguayan, a Peruvian, a Pole, a Portuguese, a Qatari, a Romanian, a Russian, a Rwandan, a Saint Lucian, a Salvadoran, a Samoan, a San Marinese, a Sao Tomean, a Saudi, a Scottish, a Senegalese, a Serbian, a Seychellois, a Sierra Leonean, a Singaporean, a Slovakian, a Slovenian, a Solomon Islander, a Somali, a South African, a South Korean, a Spaniard, a Sri Lankan, a Sudanese, a Surinamer, a Swazi, a Swede, a Swiss, a Syrian, a Taiwanese, a Tajik, a Tanzanian, a Togolese, a Tongan, a Trinidadian or Tobagonian, a Tunisian, a Turkish, a Tuvaluan, a Ugandan, a Ukrainian, a Uruguayan, a Uzbekistani, a Venezuelan, a Vietnamese, a Welshman, a Yemenite, a Zambian and a Zimbabwean all go to a nightclub... The doorman stops them and says sorry I cant let you in without a Thai.
Chinese telecoms behind it? (Score:3)
Just finishing China's Second Continent by Howard French, which includes a short chapter on Ghana. Interesting mix of viewpoints. Short summary is long-term planning but a lot of shoddy work on the short term. Main surprise was how many Chinese are emigrating to Africa for the economic opportunities and relative freedom.
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New phones ... (Score:2)
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Naa that carriers can and do push forced upgrades already.
The difference is that the cell carrier won't have to first buy new spectrum followed by selling the old spectrum back.
I'd like to be cynical about it too but it actually doesn't cost additional money, and doesn't enable them to screw customers over in any ways they can't already.
This change actually would allow them to add new service within their existing spectrum if they wanted to do so. Currently that just isn't an option.
It would also allow the
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That can work, but that's also a good way to lose subscribers.
Cell service is a subscription, and it's in the best interests of carriers to retain subscribers. If a subscriber is trying to force all 2G users to LTE, they can't just disable 2G service - it would result in them losing all those subscribers
Not the Whole Story (Score:3)
When I read that summary, the cynic in me thought, "Yeah, that sounds about right. One of the big global telco operators has managed to bribe the Ghana government to reduce their operating costs. They'll use the same tactic on more third-world nations until it becomes "the norm" and then point to the "success" in those countries to persuade western nations to follow suit. Which lowers the costs for the telcos without any concession to bringing down costs for end users. Typical."
I was wrong, obviously. The last two paragraphs of the Bloomberg article read as follows:
"Ghana gave operators free spectrum and reduced its communication service tax to 5% to bring down data prices amid coronavirus-related lockdowns. Lower costs will lead to more usage, “so, on economies of scale, the companies will not lose out,” Owusu-Ekuful said.
The country’s telecommunication market is dominated by a unit of Johannesburg-based MTN Group Ltd., a subsidiary of Vodafone Group Plc, and AirtelTigo, which Ghana has agreed to buy. Discussions for the transfer of the company, owned by a joint venture between Airtel and Millicom, are ongoing, she said."
In other words, Ghana is planning to do this as the government takes ownership of the largest player in the telecommunication market. So if they can make this work... if the Ghanan government can run and maintain and continue to enhance a publicly-held mobile network, that would constitute a very different lesson from the experiment - that public ownership of the utility makes more sense for citizens.
It will be very interesting to see how that works out, given that it's a reversal of the more prevalent recent trend of privatization that the world has seen [whether you look at say the UK, which under Margaret Thatcher in the late 1970s and early 1980s triggered a mass privatization of most public services as a means of funding tax cuts], or Russia, which in its early days of the post-Soviet collapse sold off many of its national operators to a group of influential Russians who are know collectively referred to as Oligarchs [for some interesting reading, look for the story behind the way that Roman Abramovich made his billions].
If Ghana can make a success of this, it could serve as a blueprint for giving citizens more say in the running of services increasingly critical to their lives.
That only works if there's a causal connection (Score:2)
Typically costs aren't high because of strict licensing rules. However they can be, for example, if licensing has caused oligopolies or strange extra costs.