Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Chamber of Telecommunications, Sylvia Owusu-Ankomah, is admonishing that lessons from previous SIM registration exercises must guide the upcoming new exercise to avoid consumer frustration and operational challenges.
Her comments follow the Cabinet’s approval for Ghana to undertake another nationwide SIM registration exercise, which will be the third major subscriber registration effort in the country.
Sylvia Owusu-Ankomah indicated that the telecom industry has already been informed of the government’s intention during engagements with the Ministry of Communication, Digital Technology and Innovations, and the National Communications Authority.
She said the Ghana Telecoms Chamber has also provided input into the review of the regulatory framework that will govern the exercise.
According to her, the legislative framework underpinning the new registration exercise must be reviewed and concluded with parliamentary input to ensure the process is robust and properly structured before implementation begins.
She noted that while mobile network operators are supportive of efforts to strengthen subscriber identification systems, it is important that the implementation plan addresses past difficulties experienced in previous exercises.
“We will support governments to ensure that Ghana maintains a robust ID system. However, we want to ensure that the process is transparent, that it is mindful of the challenges we have had with previous subscriber registration in order not to make it chaotic and uncomfortable for consumers.
“We have seen in the past where there were long queues and a lot of consumer frustration that comes with SIM registration.
“The minister is quite clear in his mind and in his mandate to the NCA that we should try and avoid that happening again. So to that extent, the chamber is open to working with the NCA on an implementation plan that would, you know, address those concerns. However, as I mentioned, we first need the legislative instrument to be passed,” she said.
While discussions on the operational framework are ongoing, the Telecoms Chamber says it is still too early to determine the financial implications of the exercise.
Sylvia Owusu-Ankomah explained that clarity on costs will depend on the roadmap and implementation guidelines that will be provided once the relevant legislative instrument is passed and stakeholder engagements commence.
“To be fair, to the extent that we haven’t commenced the implementation and we haven’t counted the cost, it’s quite premature to make any pronouncements on where the cost sits for this exercise.
What we have committed to is to work closely with the NCA and the ministry to ensure that we have an implementation roadmap that is as, you know, smooth and as non-intrusive to our consumers as possible.
“One that avoids the queues, one that ensures that we are able to do this in a much more robust manner than has been done in the past.
“However, as we speak, we are yet to have, you know, a full roadmap and really transparency around what costs are involved here.
These are preliminary conversations, so we do hope that by the time the LI is passed and the NCA convenes an implementation or a kick off meeting, we will have a lot more clarity around what costs are involved in this new registration and a decision taken with regards to how that will be funded for.
But there will definitely be the economics that we will not be able to wish off and we need to address,” she stated.
