SARPONG'S BLOG

By Fred Yaw Sarpong Huge sum of money is allegedly been missing at the Atebubu- Amantin Municipal Assembly in the Brong Ahafo region of Ghana. The latest one is over GH¢32,000 getting missing from the Agricultural Development Bank (ADB) account of Atebubu-Amantin Municipality at Atebubu branch. Investigation conducted by this reporter revealed that the withdrawal was made gradually between December 2012 and March 2013. According to the investigations conducted, Richard Boateng, an accountant at the Municipality is allegedly behind the withdrawal in collaboration with some top officials at the municipality. Since the incident occurred, Boateng has run away from the district and cannot be traced. The District Police Commander, Chief Superintendent Martey confirmed the case on phone to the investigative journalist. However, he added that they are currently on their investigation and cannot disclose anything detail of where they have reach to the reporter. Ch...

By Fred Yaw Sarpong Vodafone Ghana, the second mobile operator in Ghana has escape fine from the National Communications Authority (NCA) for successive 14 months, after the national regulator found no fault against Vodafone on quality of service. In an interview with the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Vodafone, Patricia Obo-Nai said primarily it has been through a strategic position to invest into the network.   According to her when Vodafone took over from Ghana Telecom some years back, they had about 300 based stations and that was not enough to deliver the quality of service (QoS) they wanted across the network. ‘So we decided to invest into the business operation of the network but not just our brand because we believe in the quality of service to our customers. It was important to spend money to improve upon the network and today we have about 1,600 based stations spread across the country with about US$700 million investment. I think this is a test...

By Fred Yaw Sarpong The Mobile Telecommunication Network (MTN) Ghana is comfortable leading the telecom data subscribers in Ghana. According to the National Communications Authority (NCA), the regulator of the telecom industry, MTN Ghana leads the data market share with 65.42%. MTN Ghana had 5,819,634 data lines at the end of March 2013. Statistics from the NCA website shows that Telecom Data Subscription numbered about 8,895,430 in Ghana at the end of March, 2013. The figure is a total contribution from all the six telecom operators in Ghana. They are Mobile Telecommunication Network (MTN), Tigo, Vodafone, Airtel, Glo and Expresso. This is followed by Tigo with 1,288,496 data lines, representing 14.48% market share while Airtel recorded 867,386 data lines, representing 9.75% market share. Vodafone Ghana, which is the second mobile network operator in the country, recorded 590,567 as data lines at the end of March, this year bringing the network to the number fourt...

By Fred Yaw Sarpong According to the analytical of the 2010 Population and Housing Census launched in Accra last week by the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS), only 7.8% of the population from 12 years and older had access to internet. Internet users in Ghana numbered 1,312,971. The highest percentage of internet users in the country, 42.3%, resided in the Greater Accra, followed by Ashanti (22.5%), Central (7.9%), Western (97.9%), Eastern (6.8%), Brong Afafo (4%), Volta (3.9%), Northern (2.4%) with the lowest in Upper East (1.2%) and Upper West (1.1%) regions. This shows that less than 3% of the population in the three northern regions has access to internet facilities. The report indicates that individuals who use the internet are more likely to be male, young, educated, unemployed and reside in urban area. Out of the 1,312,971 internet users in Ghana, urban sector had 1,147,874, representing 87.4% while the rural sector had 165,097, representing 12.6%. Western reg...