Outgoing Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of MTN Ghana, Selorm Adadevoh has urged telecommunication companies in the country to seize the begging opportunities in the sector to bring satisfaction to their customers and drive growth in the country.
Adadevoh made this appeal in his last public engagement ahead of his departure to take up a new position as a member of the MTN Group Executive Committee in South Africa.
Addressing questions from some participants in the programme dubbed “Time with Selorm,” the outgoing CEO noted that the COVID-19 pandemic had brought in its wake enormous opportunities for investment and expansion.
“Today, we complain about opportunities not being taken within the industry. Home penetration in Ghana is less than 10 percent for high-speed broadband internet. It is about seven percent, and that is below 10 percent. So, there is a whole 90 percent of home internet penetration, which is an opportunity,” the CEO revealed.
Apart from rural penetration, where opportunities still exist, he said there were also specialized areas like private networks for mines and oil rigs and opportunities in financial services that is still growing.
In other countries, environments, and markets, these are opportunities that service providers would have taken advantage of, added the MTN official.
Ultimately, he said it is an issue of investment and the appetite to invest in some of the critical areas is a decision the service providers should make.
He reminded the telecoms companies that “Telecoms is an infrastructure-heavy and investment-heavy industry, and nothing can change that. Even if you exhaust network sharing opportunities to the limit, you still need to put capacity into the network.”
“So, the companies can determine their investment appetites and where that investment should go,” the CEO who joined MTN in 2018, urged.
The investments in expansion, he conceded also depends on the incentives in the country to motivate the operators.
He urged the government to incentivize service providers to import more equipment into the country with an attractive tax regime to make technology a driver of economic growth and competitiveness within the sub-region.
Telecom infrastructure development spurs economic growth, and markets that develop it reap the benefits from the infrastructure and technological advancement, stressed the MTN official.
“There is an opportunity for us to decide if technology is really an instrument of economic growth than the tax systems. The tax regime in Ghana today does not encourage the level of investment that could come into the country,” Adadevoh added.