| The Ghana Chamber of Telecommunications (GCT) highlights interventions rolled out by its members to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 - 14/04/2020 |
| Ghana Chamber of Telecommunications (GCT) |
| TELECOM/ICT Policy Makers and Regulators | Africa | Ghana |
| GOVERNMENT: • Free access to critical websites and Government portals that provide COVID-19 awareness and safety protocols to enable citizens access information for free. • On-going Collaboration with National Information Technology Authority (NITA) to zero-rate Government of Ghana Smart Workplace Portal to enable government workers work from home. • Provision of network related data through our regulator to facilitate contact tracing assistance and infection monitoring led by the COVID-19 taskforce and GHS teams. • Zero-rate calls to the National COVID-19 response number 112. NETWORK RESILIENCE: • Optimization of our networks and capacity boost to support surge in voice and data usage due to mass behaviour shift to working from home, e-learning, increased streaming, online gaming, virtual meetings and movies and TV viewing online. • Deployment of additional infrastructure in the ensuing weeks to enhance our charging systems and intelligent networks to cater for increase in volumes for voice and data. • Following ongoing deliberations with our Regulator for additional network resources to maintain acceptable customer experience, further sites to be rolled out, additional international bandwidth to be expanded as well as fibre redundancy projects to be undertaken across the industry.Other Initiatives by our Members • Our members are independently rolling out commercial offers such as no disconnection policy for postpaid business/enterprise customers, huge bonuses on airtimes purchased through mobile money platforms, double data allocations on selected bundles, and data offers which do not expire all through these difficult times. • Some of our members have: o Activated short codes 199, 769 for the Ghana Health Service and 311 for the Ministry of Information to assist with enquiries and complaints from the general public on COVID-19. Other provisioned lines for the Information Ministry to be used for social media services. o Our members, using their CSR Foundations have pledged and donated in consultation with the Ministry of Health and Ghana Health Service medical supplies worth millions of credits to complement Government’s efforts in the fight against COVID-19. o Deployed of mobile financial service (MFS) merchant accounts as collection conduit to support Government Institutions like the Ministry of Finance and the First Lady’s Fund mobilization for COVID-19. o Using data science techniques to leverage the production of rapid mobility estimates using anonymised and aggregated mobile phone data to support Government’s interventions against COVID-19. • Supplied wireless internet connectivity (routers, network devices, data) to Greater Accra Regional Teleconsultation Centre (TCC) at Ridge Hospital and Information Ministry to facilitate education and psychological support under the Mental Health Authority. • Supplied over 2,500 SIM cards with over 4TB of data to support the national contact tracing effort. |
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Source Link Keywords: digital services; e-learning; e-government; e-banking; zero-rated; infrastructure |