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MTN Ghana SIM sales barred

Bonnie Tubbs
By Bonnie Tubbs, ITWeb telecoms editor.
Johannesburg, 06 Dec 2012
MTN has been ordered to cease subscriber additions in one of its key markets, Ghana.
MTN has been ordered to cease subscriber additions in one of its key markets, Ghana.

MTN Ghana has been ordered not to acquire any more subscribers, due to the sudden deterioration of its network quality.

Ghana's state communications regulator, the National Communications Authority (NCA), last week issued an official directive to the MTN subsidiary "to cease selling and/or adding new SIM cards" on its network.

With about 11.3 million subscribers and more than half the market share, MTN's Ghana subsidiary is one of its largest markets, after Nigeria, Iran and SA.

Network descent

The NCA says it has had to engage with MTN Ghana (formerly Scancom Ltd) "on several occasions" on the issues of quality of service degradation - including network reliability, network availability, dropped calls, call set-up and denial-of-service - being experienced by consumers.

In spite of these engagements, says the NCA, network performance on MTN continues to decline.

The directive places MTN Ghana under an obligation to immediately stop selling SIM cards and adding subscribers to its network - "until further notice".

No material impact

MTN says, although the sale of new SIMs has been "temporarily suspended" by the NCA, it does not expect the development to have any major impact on its operations.

"This ban will not impact existing subscribers of MTN Ghana, and we currently do not expect this to have a material impact on the performance of the business for 2012."

Paul Norman, MTN Group chief HR and corporate affairs officer, says MTN is actively engaging the regulator to address its concerns. "[We] hope to have a speedy and amicable resolution of the matter."

The ban comes a month after MTN Group announced its Ghana branch would be part of its drive to deliver Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 devices to its customers. Ghana was set to start selling the devices this month.

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