Ghana’s NCA Completes Strategic Plan

Photo Credit: NCA (Ghana)

The National Communications Authority (NCA) of Ghana has completed a project agreement with the Commonwealth Telecommunications Organization (CTO) to assist with the development of its 5-year Strategic Plan. The Plan will help the NCA to continue facilitating the fast growth that the country’s ICT sector has witnessed over the last decade, over which period, for example, Ghana’s mobile penetration rate grew from 0.67% to 81%.

The Strategic Plan provides the NCA with overarching Strategic Objectives, including:
•    ensuring effective market competition,
•    streamlining spectrum regulation,
•    improving consumer relations and perhaps most importantly,
•    accelerating broadband communications in Ghana.

The development of Internet and broadband usage in Ghana has been slow to date, as in much of Sub-Saharan Africa. Much of this can be attributed to the limited penetration of fixed line phones, the traditional means of Internet access. Though the proliferation of mobile networks has helped increase mobile Internet penetration in Ghana to 22%, the number of broadband users is still low when compared with more developed countries. In light of the disparities in usage, Ghana’s Ministry of Communications and NCA want to see a substantial rise in the number of users in order to induce the multiplier effect broadband can have on socio-economic development efforts.

In addition to formulating new strategic objectives, the CTO worked with their counterparts at the NCA to design a new institutional framework for the agency to ensure the Authority has the structure and human capacity to meet its objectives. As well as proposing some changes to the structure of the Authority, the framework details training requirements that will help the NCA meet current and future challenges.

The NCA’s Director General, Mr. Paarock VanPercy said: “The Strategic Plan developed with the assistance of CTO has helped to further crystallize our most important goals for the coming years and it ensures that the NCA remains focused on serving all ICT stakeholders, deepening competition and fostering growth and opportunity in the ICT/Communications industry. This should in turn ensure that service providers deliver the best quality of services to consumers.”

Speaking after NCA’s acceptance of the CTO final report, the CTO’s CEO, Professor Tim Unwin said, “The development of new Strategic Plans by Regulators is becoming ever more important as ICT sectors become more competitive, complex and diverse. The CTO is delighted to have been able to assist the NCA with the development of its Strategic Plan that will enable it to seize the opportunities created by the improvement in ICT infrastructure and access. Collaboration between the NCA and CTO has been very successful, and the CTO looks forward to assisting the NCA implement the plan over the coming years.”

January 20, 2012/by actualize

Asia, Connectivity, Originally posted on the GBI Portal, Where we work

Indonesia Aims to Have 30% Broadband Penetration by 2014

The Indonesian Ministry of Economy recently publicly announced its goal to increase “meaningful” broadband penetration by 30% by 2014. The goal is optimistic; Internet penetration was 12.3% in 2010, only 18% of which was broadband, making broadband penetration around 2.2% of the population.

In the Jakarta Declaration for Meaningful Broadband released on April 14, 2011, a collection of government and private industry ICT leaders in the Indonesia agreed on the goal to bring “meaningful” broadband access – affordable, usable, and empowering – from under 3% to a ten-fold increase of 30% within three years. This “big push” for broadband penetration is founded on a US$9.2 billion plan. The plan includes $4.3 billion public-private partnership (PPP) funding allocation, linking PT Telecom’s fibre optic cable to “last mile” initiatives to connect rural, more isolated areas. According to estimates, Elizabeth Aris, expert on National Broadband Networks, states that such a PPP would leave costs at “$3 a month per consumer.”

Photo Credit: Digitaldivide.org

Critics of the fund claim that Indonesia has more pressing needs, that broadband should be left entirely to the private sector, and that Indonesia’s goal is implausible. The Meaningful Broadband Working Group is not deterred, however. Craig Smith, former Harvard Professor and current director of the Investment Group Against the Digital Divide, explains that the Indonesian government has set specific goals to minimize the gap in income inequality, but additional goals to increase GDP.

“The problem with GDP growth is that it only benefits the wealthy. So, the government says let’s use broadband that could create equitable growth… The problem is that they did not understand the critical mass of broadband… is important to require the equitable growth,” Smith said. In other words, broadband penetration is an economic equalizer as well as accelerator, but only when large investments into IT infrastructure are made.

June 7, 2011/by actualize