MTN to spend $207m on infrastructure upgrade

Telecommunications company, MTN, has earmarked $207 million for investments into its infrastructure this year.

The single biggest investment in the year will go into upgrade of cell sites, increasing the rollout of fourth generation sites and other upgrades to enable the company to deliver quality and superior services.

The CEO of MTN, Mr. Selorm Adadevoh, announced this in Accra last Friday when he interacted with editors and senior journalists.

Some participants at the event

The infrastructural investments include the construction of 120 more cell sites, 60 new 4G sites and modernising all its 1,322 4G sites to make them 5G ready.

MTN plans to roll out the superfast 5G technology next year.

Mr. Adadevoh said regular investment was required because the growth rate in demand for some services in the sector was much faster than the growth rate of technology and infrastructure to meet them.

“We cannot achieve a digital economy that Ghana wants unless we invest in the needed technology, so we need this investment to continue helping companies to work virtually to achieve productivity,” he said.

“Digitisation has galloped, and consumption has galloped far ahead of network technology,” Mr. Adadevoh stated.

“MTN will continue to take the risks in the interest of the country as it has always done to ensure that the digital Ghana agenda becomes a reality across the country.

“For us, it is never a story of ending. We always look at the future, and we think about the opportunities and how we can improve on what we do.

“The ambition continues to be the same, we continue to brighten the lives of Ghanaians,” he added.

African trade

Mr. Adadevoh called for the increased technological infrastructure in order to push forward the agenda of the African Continental Free Trade Area.

“One of the things that will make the countries do well is technology. Ghana’s desire to become a digital economy is great but we don’t get there without infrastructure.”

The telecoms company, which paid more than GH¢2.6 billion in tax revenue to the state last year, currently represents close to 80 per cent of trading on the Ghana Stock Exchange.

The company has traded a total volume of 69.2 million shares valued at GH¢81.8 million over the period, with an average of 1.1 million traded shares per session.

On mobile money, he said the telecom companies had embarked on a collaborative activity to curtail the activities that continually created mistrust in mobile money customers.

“From now on, we have decided to block the telephone numbers as well as the handsets used in such activities across all networks. This will make mobile money fraud such an expensive venture to undertake,” Mr. Adadevoh added.