The Minister for Communication and Digitalisation, Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, has blamed the demise of broadband service providers such as Surfline on the 2015 decision to auction 4G spectrum to mobile networks, mainly MTN.
Ursula Owusu-Ekuful claimed that the auction provided an unfair advantage to mobile providers at the expense of broadband operators.
In an exclusive interview with Bernard Avle on Citi FM’s Citi Breakfast Show on Monday, June 24, the Communication Minister stated that the government has reached out to broadband operators to see how they might be assisted to remain viable.
“Decisions made in 2015 directly resulted in the failure of these enterprises, these local broadband wireless operators, who had no chance once the field was opened up to mobile network operators.
“It is as if we gave with one hand and took with the other. I have had extensive conversations with them to see how we can support them and it is not just Surfline which exited the market but Blue Broadband was also in there.”
She told Bernard Avle that putting the 4G spectrum out for auction had weakened broadband providers.
“The government sold spectrum to local operators to conduct broadband with the idea that they would have exclusive access to that area, whereas mobile network operators did voice and acquired data services from them [broadband operators] if they wished to provide those data services to their users.
“After giving them exclusivity, we went ahead and auctioned the 4G spectrum to these same big firms, which MTN subsequently acquired because it has far more financial strength than these local entities, allowing MTN to corner the market.
“At the price, the spectrum was pegged at the time, it was only MTN that could buy it and that made it possible for them to corner the high-speed data market and blow the rest of the operators out of the market.”
