MTN Ghana has said following a successful pilot of national roaming services with Vodafone Ghana (Telecel) in the Volta Region, it is extending the service to other parts of the country under a one year agreement.
Additionally, the leading telecoms player has also reached a four-month agreement with competitor AirtelTigo to roll out national roaming in parts of the country.
As part of regulatory interventions following the declaration of MTN Ghana as a significant market power (SMP), government enjoined MTN to do national roaming with other industry players as a way of driving ensuring the sustainability of the entire industry.
In April 2022, therefore, MTN Ghana signed a national roaming agreement with Vodafone, commencing a pilot programme which allowed Vodafone subscribers in the Volta Region to roam on MTN’s network.
MTN said following the success of the pilot, the two parties signed a one-year agreement to extend national roaming on 2G, 3G and 4G beyond Volta Region to other areas.
Techfocus24 gathered that the national roaming agreement between MTN and Vodafone covers over 400 2G sites and more than 600 3G and 4G sites across the country.
“MTN also reached an agreement with AirtelTigo for a four-month national roaming pilot to allow AirtelTigo subscribers to roam on MTN’s network in selected locations across the country,” it said.
According to MTN, these agreements, together with various other rural telephony initiatives in partnership with the government, support its work to increase digital inclusion, adding that “These partnerships will increase the efficiency of infrastructure spend in the industry overall, expand quality telecom coverage, accelerate the development and long-term viability of the telecoms industry, and support the national agenda of building a digital economy.”
Meanwhile, MTN itself gained an additional 3.3 million subscribers in 2022 alone. To maintain and improve quality of service for the increasing numbers, as well as accommodate the extra load that national roaming brings, MTN invested GHS2.1 billion in total capex to support the modernization of infrastructure, improve IT systems and expand network capacity and coverage across the nation.
“To advance network experience and coverage, we rolled out 400 2G, 400 3G and 1,142 4GÂ sites. We also modernized 820 existing 4G sites, increasing our 4G population coverage by 8.7 percentage point year-on-year to 99.3%,” the company said.
