"The National Communications Authority (NCA) will in the coming days begin the implementation of specific policies to ensure a level playing field for all network operators within the telecommunications industry," it said.
Industry Statistics released from the Statistical Bulletin – Quarter 4, 2019 of the National Communications Authority (NCA) indicates that MTN has almost 75% of telecommunications market share. A review of these reports has shown that this has been the trend over a three year period. This trend has continued into the first quarter of 2020 as well.
The policy is therefore aimed at ensuring proper and healthy competition among telecommunications players, secure a much better pricing policy for the consumers and facilitate a sound regulatory regime.
So under the National Telecommunications Policy (NTP), any operator with 40% or more market share in voice, data, SMS and value-added services like Mobile Money, is considered a Significant Market Power (SMP).
To correct this imbalance, the NCA will apply the following measures in exercise of its regulatory mandate:
Asymmetrical Interconnect rate in favour of the disadvantaged operators.
Setting of floor/ceiling pricing on all minutes, data, SMS, Mobile Money, etc.
Review and approve all pricing by the SMP as required by law.
Require SMP not to have differential prices for on-net and off-net transactions.
Ensure various operator vendors are not subject to exclusionary pricing or behavior.
Ensure that SMP's access to information does not disadvantage any value added service of non-SMP operators.
Require operators to present implementation plans on National Roaming Services within the next 30 days for execution on or before the next 90 days.
"These measures kick in immediately and the NCA is expected to work with all Network Operators who must cooperate to ensure it is done painlessly. We have come a long way in a very dynamic industry which has seen ancestors of all the current operators being the dominant player at one stage", Mrs Owusu-Ekuful said
MTN Ghana said in a statement released on Monday that it had not yet received the formal notification from the regulator and was awaiting it to assess the details.
