Over 16. 2 million, representing 60 percent of MTN-Ghana’s subscriber base of 27.2 million, have so far linked their SIM cards with Ghana card details in the ongoing SIM card reregistration exercise.
Of the figure, only 10.8 million representing 40% have had their bio-data captured to finalise the reregistration process. The subscribers who are yet to complete the exercise have up until July 31st to do so.
The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of MTN Ghana, Selorm Adadevoh, disclosed this in Kumasi during a media and stakeholder engagement. He said the statistics show a lot of subscribers have not heeded the regulatory exercise, and the company will have no other choice than to disconnect these people after the deadline, saying: “We need a lot of energy around SIM reregistration so that we don’t disconnect our customers”.
The SIM reregistration exercise started in October 2021 and was supposed to have ended on March 31, 2022; but the deadline was extended to July 31, 2022. The deadline extension was to allow those without Ghana cards to obtain one, which is a basic requirement for the reregistration exercise.
Last month, the Minister for Communications and Digitalisation, Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, categorically stated that there will be no further extension of the deadline – affirming that anyone who fails to reregister his/her SIM card must be ready for the consequence of disconnection.
Cost of data
Commenting on cost of mobile data, the CEO of MTN Ghana said over 90% of content downloaded in the country is from the USA and UK through undersea cables that need 320 gigabytes per second, thus making the cost of data expensive. He added that transmission of data also requires a lot of fibre – of which MTN Ghana has only 8,800 km across the country as compared to over 300,000 km of fibre in the US and UK; thus cheaper data in those countries.
That notwithstanding, Mr Adadevoh indicated: “If you think about Africa, Ghana is number-three in terms of cheapest country for data. But once we able to support and build more digital infrastructure, it will help boost the development and consumption of local content to accelerate improvement in pricing of data in the country”.
Social investments
He disclosed the telecommunication giant has so far invested in 157 different corporate social initiatives, 87 in the education space and the rest in health and economic empowerment.
“These are all things we take a big responsibility for and we’ll continue to support. This year, GH¢20million has been approved for corporate social investments.”
