Warid diputes Ghanaian mobile licensing process

Nigerian-based Globacom has wasted no time in establishing itself in Ghana, paying the US$50.1 million fee to the regulator only one week after winning the mobile licence and immediately starting the network rollout.

However, Warid Telecom International, the Abu Dhabi-based company, looks set to contest the mobile licence issued by Ghana’s National Communications Authority (NCA) to Globacom Nigeria. An official announcement by the NCA on June 20 that Glo won the bid for a sixth mobile licence in the country was expected to put the issue to rest, but officials of Warid, one of the twocompanies short-listed for the licence, are reported to have claimed the process was not transparent.

Warid Telecom’s officials said they equally qualified to pay the minimum reserve of US$50 million to the NCA, but were not given the opportunity. However, Globacom made public a letter from the NCA naming it the winner of the bid for the sixth mobile operating licence ahead of the NCA’s official announcement.

A total of 11 companies bid for the licence and include TransAtlantic Industries, Global Trade Imex, Teylium Telecom International and TechnoEdge Ghana.

Ghana’s incumbent mobile operators are Kasapa, MTN, One Touch and Tigo. Western Telecom Systems, which already operates a fixed facility, is yet to launch a mobile telephone network, months after it received the country’s fifth such licence. According to figures from the Mobile World database, the country only had 7.6 million subscribers at the end of 2007, representing a mobile penetration rate of approximately 33 per cent.

Globacom’s director of new markets, Yinka Olafimihan, said the deployment of personnel and infrastructure for the sixth mobile licence in Ghana was part of the company’s plan for an early rollout of services in the west African country and advised that Globacom is also in the process of bidding for a licence in Togo.

Globacom’s aggressive activity in Ghana closely follows the launch of its Glo Mobile network in Benin in early June, where 600,000 SIM cards were sold in the first two weeks.

The company won a GSM operating licence in Benin last year and has built out its network covering the main cities, with a switching centre in capital city of Cotonou.

Benin’s population is estimated at 8.3 million, meaning more than seven per cent of the population bought a Glo Mobile SIM card in the initial launch period.

It is believed per-second billing was an attractive proposition for many consumers, compared to the per-20-second billing that the four competitors offer.