MTN and Vodafone awarded additional spectrum for three months

Ghana’s telecoms regulator the National Communications Authority (NCA) has temporarily granted Vodafone and MTN Ghana additional spectrum to help them cope with a significant increase in internet traffic during the country’s COVID-19 lockdown, reports Ghana Web citing communications minister Ursula Owusu-Ekuful. According to the minister, the additional spectrum has been granted to the country’s two largest mobile network operators (MNOs) at no cost for a three-month period to ‘help reduce pressure on their networks’, which are ‘bearing the brunt’ of the surge in demand. She also appealed to the public to moderate their data usage in order to alleviate the pressure on telecoms providers.

According to TeleGeography’s GlobalComms Database, the two MNOs provide mobile services using frequencies in the 800MHz, 900MHz, 1800MHz and 2100MHz bands, while MTN also uses the 2600MHz band for LTE-A services.

―Comms Update