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MTN concerned about setbacks in obtaining permits
Accra, March 24, Ghanadot/GNA – Mr Brett Goshen, Chief Executive
Officer (CEO) of MTN, Ghana, on Tuesday said the company had all
the resources and expertise to deal adequately with network
challenges.
He, however, said that the slow pace at which permits were
delivered for mounting of cell sites posed a challenge to the
company’s efforts.
He told the Ghana News Agency that agencies in charge of issuing
permits were too slow.
Mr Goshen explained that before a telecom operator could mount a
cell site, they needed to obtain separate permits from the
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Ghana Civil Aviation
Authority (GCAA), District, Metropolitan and Municipal
Assemblies and the Ghana National Fire Service.
He noted that the agencies had not been able to keep up with the
fast rate at which the telecom industry was developing possibly
because they were understaffed, saying, this partially accounted
for the congestion particularly on the networks of huge
operators like MTN.
Mr Goshen said “The rate of growth of the industry might have
overwhelmed the staff of the permit agencies and for that they
are not able to keep up with the pace in terms of the demand for
permits by the various operators,”.
He said before MTN took over from Areeba, the latter used to
install about 50 cell sites in a year but currently MTN was
installing twice that number in a month and that could be
overwhelming for the largely understaffed permit agencies.
Mr Goshen said one base transmitter station (BTS) could only
take between 2,500 and 3,000 calls at a time, adding that with
almost seven million subscribers, MTN required more base
stations particularly within the densely populated communities
to ensure quality call.
“Hundreds of our requests for permits to mount cell sites to
increase capacity and improve call quality are still outstanding
and we are not alone. Other operators are facing similar
challenges but the problem becomes bigger with MTN because of
our relatively huge subscriber base,” he said.
Mr Goshen said there was no reason why MTN equipment should be
sitting in warehouses for months while permit agencies were
taking a minimum of six months to issue a single permit.
He noted that issues with residents of densely populated
communities, particularly in the cities, were also a militating
factor to operators’ efforts at installing infrastructure to
increase capacity and improve service delivery quality.
Mr Goshen said “The EPA, for instance, will not issue a permit
even if an individual is opposed to the mounting of a cell site
close to their house on grounds of health, noise and other
concerns.”
He assured subscribers that MTN was working around the clock to
provide the “highest call quality”, saying that owing to
challenges of obtaining permits in good time MTN was vigorously
championing co-location deals with other operators to enable
more than one network to share cell sites.
“Co-location is very close to our hearts and we are getting on
very well with the other operators in reaching co-location deals
to enable us to provide better services to our teaming
customers,” Mr Goshen said.
He said operators have so far agreed on hundreds of cell sites
to co-locate their infrastructure.
Mr Goshen said “MTN has provided the list of all its existing
and proposed future cell sites to our competitors but some have
still not reciprocated our gesture.”
He said MTN was pursuing co-location deals beyond just the
sharing of cell sites to even agreements on how to share fibre
routes, adding that talks were under way with the National Fibre
Optics Backbone Company to agree on sharing fibre optics routes
and paths.
“It is our belief that the networks can come to an agreement on
how our fibre routes can serve as backups for each other,” Mr
Goshen said.
He assured MTN subscribers that the company would go to every
extent to ensure that they had good quality service, saying that
this year alone MTN planned to spend half a billion dollars on
network infrastructure.
GNA
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