NCA threatens to terminate Kasapa licence

The National Communications Authority (NCA) has asked Kasapa Telecom Limited to comply with the regulatory and licence obligations guiding the telecom industry, else it will terminate the licence of the telecom operator.

In a statement issued in Accra, the NCA said it formally notified Kasapa in January 2018 about its intention to terminate the licence.

“The notification, which was served on Kasapa at the end of January, 2018, referred the service provider to Section 13 (1) of the Electronics Communications Act (2009), Act 775, which gives the NCA the mandate to suspend or revoke a licence or a frequency authorisation,’’ it said.

Grounds for termination

The NCA gave seven grounds for its decision to terminate the licence of Kasapa.

They include the telecom service provider’s failure to pay its annual regulatory fees since 2014, its inability to offer its services since 2014 and failure to pay its fees for the usage of microwave frequencies.

Other grounds are Kasapa’s “engagement in anti-competitive practices by terminating/transiting international traffic as domestic traffic on other networks,’’ and failure to pay fees owed to Porting XS, the Mobile Number Portability (MNP) Service Provider.

The NCA also found Kasapa guilty of not meeting its financial obligations to other telecom operators in respect of Interconnection payments and also switching off its network without duly notifying the telecom regulator.

Kasapa challenges

The statement explained that in 2014, the NCA became concerned about the myriad of challenges facing Kasapa, and, therefore, started to engage it about how it could operate and use the spectrum allocated to it effectively.

“This became necessary as Kasapa occupies a vital portion of the spectrum which is being under-utilised and due to which stakeholders are unable to derive broader stakeholder value,’’ it said.

According to the NCA, Kasapa made various promises to improve its operations as a result of the engagement, but those promises yielded no positive results.

“In addition, Kasapa’s market share kept on dwindling and from April, 2017, Kasapa has not been able to submit its subscription figures, with their last submissions being Mobile Voice figures of 23,264 (Market Share of 0.06%) and Mobile Data figures of 10,151 (Market Share of 0.08%), the statement added.

The NCA assured the telecom industry and the general public that it would continue to “streamline the industry to ensure compliance and also guarantee that the good people of Ghana benefit collectively from the scarce national resources.’’