MTN not excluded from 5G rollout: Ursula Owusu denies claims

MTN not excluded from 5G rollout: Ursula Owusu, Minister of Communication and Digitalization, denies claims.

The Minister’s announcement last month that a license has been awarded to a special purpose vehicle called Next-Gen Infrastructure Company to establish and run a nationwide 4G and 5G shared infrastructure has come under heavy public criticism.

Of particular concern to many was the absence of the telecoms market leader, MTN, from the seven-member consortium, which included AT Ghana and Telecel Ghana.

Some commentators have consistently been drumming a narrative that the government deliberately excluded MTN from the fold as a measure to prevent MTN from becoming a monopoly.

But speaking on an Accra radio station on Monday, the Minister dismissed the claim as absolutely false, saying “I don’t know who created that impression. Somebody threw it out there, and nobody spoke to me or any of those involved in putting this consortium together before spreading this false alarm. It is not true.”

Ursula Owusu-Ekuful said government never deliberately excluded MTN deliberately from the consortium, adding that “discussions still are ongoing with MTN – all network operators in the country are being offered the opportunity to take up equity in this Next-Gen InfraCo, including MTN. Eventually MTN will get onboard.”

Must read also: MTN Ghana Launches a nationwide network upgrade for better service and sustainability

She noted that the state of Ghana’s telecoms industry is skewed towards one direction due to a policy decision way back in 2015, to sell 4G spectrum at a price that only MTN was able to acquire it. Moreover, the release of MTN into the 4G space also depleted the value any of the then four locally-owned players in that space could derive.

“We felt the need to reset the industry and that was why we took a decision not to auction the 5G license to the highest bidder. We believe that a shared network has a better potential to reset the industry and ensure all players have value and Ghanaians also have easy and affordable access to 4G and 5G networks,” she said.

According to the Minister, currently, MTN has grown to the level where its network is congested and it will therefore be in the interest of MTN and its customers for them to join the shared network consortium either by putting in money or providing infrastructure to ensure they get extra capacity to deal with the network congestion.

Ursula Owusu-Ekuful said government is aware of the large numbers of Ghanaians on the MTN network and would therefore not deny a big player like MTN the opportunity of access to more spectrum to meet their licensing obligations.

Touching on the rollout of the shared 4G/5G nationwide infrastructure, she said the rollout is currently underway as some of the partners have made their infrastructure like towers and others available to facilitate the process.

Currently, the seven-member consortium working shared infrastructure are Ascend Digital, K-NET, Radisys, Nokia, Tech Mahindra, and the two smaller telcos in the country – AT Ghana and Telecel Ghana.