By Shina Badaru
June 27, 2008. The Ghanaian government has dismissed objections raised by Warid, the Middle Eastern mobile operator that lost the bid for the country’s sixth mobile licence to Nigeria’s second national operator, Globacom Limited, citing that much more than more than money was considered in the offer to the Nigerian company.
Warid Telecom, which was shortlisted alongside Glo Mobile Ghana Ltd., Globacom’s Ghanaian subsidiary, is contesting the issuance of the licence on account of its capability to also offer the $50.1million fee paid by Globacom to Ghana’s telecoms regulator, the National Communications Authority (NCA).
An official of Globacom told Technology Times anonymously that the company considers the objection a “non-issue” and was focused on delivering on its promise to offer affordable and efficient telecoms services to “our brothers and sisters, the good people of Ghana who have shown confidence in us.”
While giving insight into the extensive due diligence conducted on Globacom by the regulator, Director Regulations & Licensing, NCA, Joshua Peprah, says the government has enough confidence in the operational capability of Globacom to deliver to the people of Ghana.
According to him, NCA undertook the investigations to ascertain the new entrant’s capability to deliver on expectations of government in providing quality mobile telephony services that will meet expectations of Ghanaian people and based on the outcome, NCA is “certain about the readiness of Glo for the Ghanaian market.”
Peprah, in a report monitored on Africast TV, adds that the “prudent” diligence was conducted beyond Ghana’s border as NCA also worked with its Nigerian counterpart, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) to verify the local market capability of the Nigerian company.
“We did the analysis and the other things that are not monetary favoured Glo. We didn’t set out to look for who had the most money”, the NCA official says noting that the key point of emphasis was that Ghana was seeking operators with “technology capability.”
He adds that NCA’s offer was further swayed in favour of Globacom because, “to become operational in our part of the world is not easy and if you haven’t had that extensive experience, you could run into problems. We didn’t want a situation where we would start sanctioning operators for rollout non-performance.”
Eleven companies had expressed interest in the sixth mobile licence in the run-up to the “beauty contest” that the telecoms regulator hopes will encourage competition in the telecoms market.
NCA had in March said it received “unsolicited” applications from Afritel Communications Ltd, Awesomedia Ltd, BenchMac PR & Business Consult, Express Mobile Communications Ltd, Faith Telecom Ltd, Global Trade Imex Ltd and Glo Mobile Ghana Ltd. Others include TechnoEdge Ghana Limited, Teylium Telecom International, TransAtlantic Industries Ltd and Warid Telecom International, LLC.
On offer for the eventual winner were the following frequencies: 2x15 MHz: 1800 MHz as well as 2x5 MHz: 900MHz including any additional frequencies needed for network roll-out, “at the prevailing market prices.”
NCA also says the eventually winner of the bid, which will be selected using a combination of “rolling-application-evaluation process, along with a combination of Beauty Contest & Negotiation Strategies”, will qualify for additional resources including a 3G and international gateway licences.
Giving further insights into the negotiations that followed with the two companies that emerged finalists in the bid, Glo Mobile Ghana Ltd. and Warid Telecom International, LLC, the NCA official confirmed they were in April invited to present their applications.
Following this applications, “we narrowed everything to them and they were quizzed over a period of two days and then we started the internal evaluation process and it came out that Globacom, with their experience in GSM deployment in such a large, vast terrain as Nigeria and the volume of subscribers they had and what they have been able to achieve at the quality of service front, they really came top.”
Peprah adds that, “we are confident that what we have done will help consumers of Ghana, will bring competition into the mobile market and we also have another opportunity of landing another undersea cable into the country which will lift the ICT landscape into another height.”
NCA reckons that the $50.1million paid for the licence compared with $32.5million paid by other operators four years ago were justifiable on account of the technical and technology transfer that will go into Globacom’s infrastructure deployment and laying of fibre cables.
