The Director-General of the National Communications Authority (NCA), Dr. Joe Anokye has revealed that currently, MTN controls more than 80% of the mobile data market in Ghana.
He was speaking in an exclusive interview on an Accra radio station about the current agitations on social media against rising data prices, particularly on MTN Ghana.
MTN had to increase data prices for more than twice last year and also collapse some of its very affordable data bundles because they were instructed by the NCA not to have the lowest prices on the market.
The reason for that instruction was that MTN was named a significant market power (SMP) on June 2020 because, according to government, MTN controlled over 75% of the market, in terms of voice, data, SMS, mobile money and revenue.
Four years after MTN was named MTN, the NCA Boss says their control of the data market has even moved further up to over 80%, which is a clear indication that the market imbalance is worsening.
Meanwhile, NCA has for the past 18 months not have the courage to publish the monthly subscriber base numbers for the voice and data markets, as this would have clearly showed that in spite of measures to regulate MTN and close the market gap, MTN is still growing while the smaller telcos are still losing market share.
Dr. Anokye however pointed out that the NCA only regulates the pricing behavior of MTN as the SMP in the market, to ensure fair competition, but NCA does not set prices for MTN or any player in the market.
He said since November 2023, none of the telcos has submitted any new prices for approval, adding that even though MTN is the SMP, their prices are still between that of Telecel and AT, and not necessarily the highest on the market.
Asked why NCA should not be blamed for sitting by and watching MTN to grow over the decades to the point of now commanding over 80% of the data market, he said growth is a function of investment and not regulation, explaining that MTN had over the years kept investing while the other players sat by.
Speaking of investment, years back when the NCA directed all telcos to take 3G network nationwide, within a given period, it was only MTN which met the deadline, and in the process gained even one million additional customers in just months. The other telcos failed to meet the deadline, and no sanctions were applied.
“So we are not saying MTN did anything wrong by growing, but by law NCA has a duty to ensure fair competition in a manner that prevents a monopoly and that is just what we are doing as a regulator for the long-term interest of the consumer,” he said.
Other measures to ensure fair competition
Other measures NCA has put in place, with respect to ensuring fair competition, in the face of an SMP, are the asymmetrical interconnect rate, national roaming and technology neutrality among other things.
Asymmetrical Interconnect rate
Asymmetrical interconnect rate helps the non-SMP telcos to save 30% of whatever money they pay to MTN monthly for terminating traffic on MTN. It is estimated that about 70% of all calls and even SMS terminate on MTN. So, when the interconnect traffic and its related fees are reconciled at the end of every month, MTN is a perpetual net winner across board. The NCA therefore had to step in and save the others some money just to keep them in business. NCA reported that in the first three years the asymmetrical interconnect rate intervention saved the non-SMP telcos some GHS86.6 million. This is not much compared to how much MTN invested in its network over that period, but it is a good start.
National roaming and Tech Neutrality
Again, as part of the corrective measure, the NCA has facilitated a national roaming policy between MTN and the two other players. This means customers of a network which has no or poor connectivity in a particularly community can get service from another network (MTN), which has better connectivity in that community, then MTN and the respective telco will share the revenue generated from that process.
Closely related to that is a technology neutrality policy. The most obvious manifestation of that policy is the recent award of a license to a special purpose vehicle called Next-Generation Infrastructure Company (NGIC) to establish a shared 4G and 5G infrastructure for all industry players to buy into.
Dr. Anokye explained that the licensing of NGIC means the playing field for the deployment of advanced technology (4G and 5G) will be levelled to enable all players make huge savings on what they would have spent to roll out infrastructure for 4G and 5G, and thereby be able to offer even more affordable services in the long-term.
He said NGIC is expected to roll out the first set of 4G and 5G network infrastructure by the last quarter of the year to enable all telcos and other service providers get access to nationwide 4G and 5G coverage
