The first part of this article looked at the details of the ICC ruling, traced the history of AT Ghana from the days of Airtel, Tigo through AirtelTigo; how government came into the picture, plus the creation of PPL Net and the transfer of Airtel Ghana assets and staff to PPL Net. This second and final part will look at how the huge debt came about, the legal and moral arguments around it, the implication of this whole saga for the investor community, and the pros and cons of the current tower-sharing model in Ghana.Â
How the heavy debt came about
Before Airtel and Tigo merged, they each had their separate equipment on ATC Ghana’s co-location towers sites. But once they merged, it meant the new company, AirtelTigo would need only one set of equipment to operate, because it has only one frequency. But ATC Ghana had committed both Airtel and Tigo to two separate ten-year binding contracts. So, even after the two companies merged, ATC Ghana continued to bill AirtelTigo with the fees occasioned by both contracts, even though AirtelTigo derived benefits from only one of those contracts. This writer is informed that, this double fees was in respect of over 400 towers that Airteltigo never really used but were billed for.
The bills for each of the two contracts AirtelTigo/AT Ghana inherited from the defunct Airtel and Tigo was US$600,000 each for every month. In effect, AirtelTigo’s debt from those two contracts alone, kept piling up by at least US$1.2 million every month, instead of just US$600,000. This is one of the key reasons why the AT Ghana debt ballooned to the reported GHS1.5 billion the minister told journalists about. This was about US$200 million per the exchange rate then.
Accusations of monopolistic and legalistic posturing
ATC Ghana has been widely accused of adopting a monopolistic approach to its dealings with some telcos, particularly Airtel and Tigo, and by extension, AirtelTigo/AT Ghana, in the way it insists on long-term contracts or no deal. This then forms the basis of another accusation levelled against ATC Ghana, that it is extremely legalistic in its demands for the terms of those contracts to be honoured, with no consideration for the fact that, effectively, Airtel and Tigo went bankrupt, so it does not make ethical sense for creditors to keep holding the new shareholders of AirtelTigo for their liabilities.
But there is more to ATC Ghana’s insistence on holding AirtelTigo/AT Ghana to both of those contracts.
Several years back when Ghana chose the path of tower-colocation, telcos had to sell their towers to independent tower companies. The defunct Airtel and Tigo were said to have sold some of their towers to Eaton Towers at a very high price because they needed money to invest into their respective networks. This meant that Eaton Towers also subjected the two telcos to a relatively high tower fees and binding long-term contracts to recoup its investment. Eventually, Eaton sold off its tower contracts to ATC Ghana.
ATC Ghana, therefore, inherited a contract from Eaton, which said that it must charge Airtel and Tigo a certain fee. So, even after Airtel and Tigo merged, they were still under those binding contracts, because they had already been paid dearly for the towers years back. Moreover, ATC Ghana’s position is that, it had already invested to provision the towers to serve the telcos for the entire contract period, so, it does not make commercial sense for any telco to get off the hook without paying the full contract sum.
Whereas from the legal standpoint, it makes sense why ATC Ghana would insist on holding clients to the terms of a long-term contract, there are some ethical questions. The original contractors – Airtel and Tigo have gone bankrupt and left Ghana. The new client is still struggling to make ends meet. So, where is the ethics in pressing the neck of the new shareholders for the liabilities of the defunct entities? And where is the ethics in ATC Ghana’s obsession with long-term contracts even in its dealing with obviously distressed clients?
Rising Tower Fees due to Rising Inflation
As if that was not bad enough, ATC Ghana also continued to increase its annual tower fees based on rising inflation, which, again is not wrong legally. But it is not a secret in Ghana that telcos do not have the laxity to increase their tariffs every year like the towercos and utility service providers do. So, while ATC Ghana kept increasing its tower fees every year, as the regulator looked on, AirtelTigo/AT Ghana, like all other telcos, maintained tariff levels, and had to depend on innovation to shore up revenue and keep paying the ever-rising tower bills. This writer gathered that over a five-year period, tower bills increased by about 140% from GHS10,000 to GHS24,000 per tower every month. As a result, tower cost alone took 70% of AT Ghana’s operational cost. This is the kind of situation that require some regulatory intervention. But as usual, the regulator itself, was more of a revenue collector than an entity committed to managing the industry in a more sustainable manner.
Stanbic the partner, ATC the aggressor
One other critical reason why some industry watchers see ATC Ghana as more legalistic and less moral in their posture is that even though Stanbic Bank currently controls Airtel Ghana shares in PPL Net, Stanbic Bank’s posture is said to be that of a “partner” seeking the wellbeing of AT Ghana. In fact, Stanbic Bank will be better served if AT Ghana is declared bankrupt and its assets were liquidated. But per our information, they are more interested in the survival of the company, unlike ATC Ghana, which cut off service to AT Ghana in September 2025, due to the said debt. In fact ATC Ghana requested for the regulator’s permission to cut of AT Ghana six months before they actually got the permit. This writer is informed that PPL Net’s attempt to get ATC Ghana to reconnect service to AT Ghana has also failed because, ATC Ghana still insists on PPL Net committing to a long-term contract like the one that piled up the debt or no deal.
Debt Heavily Slashed
In spite of everything critics say about ATC Ghana, it also remains a fact that the company also showed good faith in heavily discounting the debt owed. It would be recalled that in 2025, the sector minister told journalists that ATC Ghana presented him with a bill over GHS1.5 billion. But this writer gathered that, what ATC Ghana actually presented to him was the heavily discounted bill. Obviously, in ATC Ghana’s documents to the minister, it stated what the original bill (GHS1.5 billion) and then stated the discounted one ($20 million). But the minister chose to tell the public about the original bill instead of the discounted one.
The interesting part is that, this same offer was to the previous government, but they were dismissive of it. Per the offer, ATC Ghana slashed off all the interest that had accumulated over the years, and also slashed down the principal bill by about 80%. This brought the bill way down to about US$20 million, which is so small compared to the original bill of almost US$200 million at the time.
Cabinet took the legalistic position and insisted that the state as the sole shareholder of Airtel Ghana, is under no obligation to pay its debts. This was not different from the previous government’s position, which was why ATC Ghana resorted to international arbitration back in 2023, seeking to bring some pressure to bear on Airtel Ghana to pay the debt. Then eventually, in September 2025, they completely cut off service to AT Ghana.
Implications of the ruling
Now the international arbitration ruling is in and, as stated in the first part of this piece, one school of thought holds that it is of zero effect because Airtel Ghana only has shares in PPL Net, and even those shares are under the control of Stanbic Bank.
The other school of thought says if ATC Ghana can get the courts in Ghana to activate the ICC ruling by proving that PPL Net was created just to hide the assets of Airtel Ghana from creditors like ATC Ghana, they will be able to get a court order to garnishee PPL Net’s assets in AT Ghana and even some state assets. But it appears that will be a hard sell because ATC Ghana was duly informed of the transfer of Airtel Ghana assets to PPL Net either before or during the process, so it was not an activity done on their blind side.
Investors are watching from the side lines
However, the more critical issue that should concern government and the country as a whole is that, ATC Ghana is the biggest American investor in Ghana and the manner in which this matter has panned out, makes it look like Ghana has no respect for US investors, and that can trigger serious repercussions from the American government against Ghana.
Even more seriously is the fact that the matter had to go to international arbitration. That alone signals to potential investors around the world that Ghana is not necessarily the best investment destination because return on investment is not guaranteed. Incidents like this create such wrong perception, and that cannot be good for us as a country. Ghana as a country must be able to prove to potential investors that there is respect for contracts, and that there are reliable local structures for dealing with commercial disputes when they arise. Investors must be assured that outcomes of their investments are predictable and not left to chance. If we fail to assure investors of predictability, we risk attracting only high-cost capital or zero capital.
A second look at the tower-sharing model
This should also be a wake up call to the industry regulator to rally all and stakeholders round to take a second look at the tower-sharing model. This far, the tower-sharing policy, even though is largely in line with international standards and saves operators from investing heavily into their own towers, it has also created a quasi-monopoly, ATC Ghana, who every player must necessarily depend on. The MNOs and ISPs position is that, as the leading towerco, ATC Ghana keeps insisting on long-term contracts with terms that guarantee it some predictability. But those contracts largely shortchange all of its clients, except one.
Meanwhile, the model is such that the towercos (in this case ATC Ghana) are totally indifferent to how much money the telcos make from the communities served by particular towers. All they care about is for the telcos to pay the fixed monthly tower and utility bills even if in the particular month the telcos make next to nothing from the community served by some particular towers. In their defence though, the towercos claim that whether telcos make money from the services of particular towers or not, they, the towercos have already made the necessary investments to support the telcos, and secondly, utility bills payable for those towers are also a given, so the fees cannot be dependent on whether a telco made money from the community served by the towers or not. It is a conundrum.
It is the humble opinion of this writer that, to ensure some sanity in that space, the regulator must take interest in the issues raised by telcos about the long-term contracts ATC Ghana, for instance insists on. Again, the regulator must show interest in the telcos’ average revenue per user (ARPU) in various communities to ensure that the tower fees telcos pay for towers in communities with low ARPU are reduced to march the ARPU. This is where the sector minister’s proposal for special telecom tariffs comes in handy. That same token should be applied to tower fees as well, because, apart from utility cost, tower fees is one of the biggest operational cost elements for telcos.
We must also not lose sight of the fact that, the cold hard truth is that Airtel and Tigo practically went bankrupt before they left this country. So, in reality, if the bankruptcy laws worked well in Ghana, like they do in America where ATC comes from, Airtel and Tigo’s debts would not have been transferred to AirtelTigo. But we are here already and we need to find an amicable way forward, one that does not create the impression that a giant entity from the most powerful country is trying to bully its way into getting the government of a tiny country to pay a bill it does not owe, because a limited liability company, in which the government owns shares, failed to pay their bills.
Pay close attention to this
In the midst of all this, government has elected to support PPL Net with some money to revive AT Ghana and be able to sustain jobs, make money and pay dividends to Airtel Ghana so that Airtel Ghana can pay its debts. This writer is informed that part of that money has been used to pay debts owed to some critical vendors of AT Ghana, but ATC Ghana and Stanbic Bank got nothing yet. ATC, from what we understand, was given a proposal to restore service to AT Ghana with short-term contracts, instead of their usual long-term contracts that strangle their clients. They have refused to take the offer, and that may be reason why the holders of the money have also adopted a legalistic stance in the disbursement of that money to exclude ATC Ghana. We think ATC Ghana should reconsider their position on contract terms.
I trust that I have done justice to the issues and all stakeholders will take their share and conduct themselves accordingly.
