The Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Chamber of Telecommunications, Ken Ashigbey, has called on President Akufo-Addo to assent to the Cyber Security Bill, which will help the Telco industry deal with unscrupulous individuals who damage the industry’s infrastructure.

Speaking in an interview, Mr. Ashigbey admitted that although a lot has been done in curbing the issue, assenting to the Bill by the President will help put an end to fibre cuts which affects internet quality and connection nationwide.

“With fibre cuts, we are not out of the woods yet. It’s a major challenge that is still affecting us. Because of the Year of Roads, there are some challenges around that. There is a new road that is being done on the beach road, and we’ve had major challenges with the contractors who are working on the site. We had to even escalate the issues to the National Engineering Coordination team and there was a meeting held to look into that. I would say that coordination has improved but there is still a lot more that is desired.

“Fortunately for us, the government has passed the Cyber Security Bill, and we are waiting for the President to assent it. In that, there are regulations that will come up that will classify telecommunications infrastructure as critical information infrastructure for which people who wilfully damage them will have dire repercussions”

Per data released by the Ghana Chamber of Telecommunications in 2019, fibre cut affected over 18 million subscribers.

The Chamber said that the fibre cuts and thefts remain a major challenge since it affects the quality of service and customer experience across the country.

This also threatens the long-term sustainability of the mobile technology ecosystem, upon which Ghana’s digitization agenda relies heavily on in delivering a formal, smart economy and connected society for Ghanaians.

The data further revealed that, the fibre cuts were mainly caused by private developers, road contractors, unknown criminals, and other utility providers.

This cost the industry over GH¢30 million in direct repairs only (without counting the cost of loss of revenue, the non-traditional temporary solutions deployed as well as additional capital expenditure to keep network availability stable).

Mr. Ashigbey, speaking in an interview then, bemoaned the issue of fibre cuts in the country due to the construction of roads.

“The service providers have to deploy extra meshed networks to provide additional redundancies to ensure that, the over 300 cuts being experienced per month currently does not impact more than 25% of the network.

“We cannot continue to accept this menace as a norm, and we are working assiduously to reach all partners and stakeholders who work within the Right of Way (RoW) across the country to agree on modalities to reduce if not eradicate the menace”.

As a result of incessant cutting of fibre optics, Mobile Telecommunications Network (MTN) hinted of a legal suit against private developers and road contractors who persistently cause damage to their fibre optic cables.

This, according to the company, has become necessary after several engagements with the Association of Road Contractors, the Ghana High Authority, the Urban Roads Department and others to find an amicable way of addressing the situation but had yielded no positive results.

The Regulatory Manager of MTN, Mr. Samuel Bartels, revealed that the issue of fibre cuts had ominously worsened amidst the vigorous sensitization and public education by the Company.

The Company spent GHS 2 million cedis to repair fibre cuts while GHS4.4 million was also spent on the relocation of fibre optic cables between January and March in 2019.