Mrs Patricia Obo-Nai, the Chief Executive Officer of Vodafone Ghana has said that the unending cuts and theft of the company’s fiber and copper cables remains a major challenge, in its quest to deliver better services to customers.
She said, the company, in the first two quarter of this year, was inundated with many fiber cuts and copper thefts, with more than 2.3 million customers affected, resulting in loss of millions in government revenue.
The CEO disclosed this at the media launch of the Vodafone Fiber Infrastructure Project in Accra on Wednesday.
The project, which begun in 2019, aims at progressively phasing out all copper installations of the company, while replacing them with ultra-speed fiber cables, for better and faster internet usage.
Mrs Obo-Nai said “we have been inundated with many cuts throughout this year and the impact is felt across the lines of our own company, other businesses, security communication networks, medical centers, people’s homes and this actually impacts revenue to government.
“When they cut the fiber it does not just affect the broadband customer, it affects the mobile as well because we have most of the mobile on 4G. From January to now 2.3 million customers have been affected because of fiber cut.”
She therefore appealed to stakeholders, including; construction companies and citizens, to see telecom infrastructure as a critical national assets and apply more caution when they come across such cables in their line of work.
Touching on the purpose of the Fiber Infrastructure Project, the Vodafone CEO said it formed part of many initiatives the company was investing in, in order to improve on customer service delivery.
“At Vodafone, anticipating customer’s needs and responding to them in a timely fashion has been an integral part of what we do as a technology company. It is with this commitment that we have invested once again in one of the most impacted transformational telecom projects in this country,” she said.
The fiber-to-the-home product, she said, was one of the most advanced form of technology for building the next generation of communication networks as it offered greater reliability and bandwidth, adding that the project when complete would provide a seamless ultra-speed fiber-to-the-home connectivity for all existing and new customers both at home and at work.
The greater bandwidth, Mrs Obo-Nai said would make it possible for more connected devices to be used for various activities at the same time, adding that “customers can watch TV, they can take online courses, they can play games, they can stream, they can download and many more at the same time.”
She said it would also positively impact healthcare delivery, improve access to quality education and boosts the economy.
She said, currently areas such as Asylum Down, Awudome, Bubuashie, Abeka, Industrial Area, Kaneshie, among others have had their copper installations replaced with fiber and therefore urged existing and new customers within such areas to take advantage of this to improve on their internet connectivity in their homes.
“To make it even better we are upgrading all our customers within these areas I have mentioned to fiber for free, so both the cables going into their homes and the modem will all be replaced for free,” she added.
GNA
