The Ghana Chamber of Telecommunications (GCT) has touted some interventions made by its members (telecommunication companies) to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 on Ghanaians.
According to the Chamber, its ad hoc vision for the coronavirus pandemic era is to unlock the power of telecommunications, technology and connectivity to help Ghanaians and the industry thrive beyond the COVID-19 crisis.
GCT, highlighting the key interventions made by its members, placed them into three categories: consumer, government and network resilience.
CONSUMER INTERVENTIONS
- Free access to over 100 educational online sites, e-learning platforms and libraries (public, private, foreign). This industry move supports a total of over 240,000 customers consuming over 3,000 GB (3TB) per day for educational purposes.
- Free calls to the National COVID-19 response number (112) as well as other emergency service numbers
- In consultation with the Ghana Health Service, our members are leveraging their infrastructure to broadcast emergency communications to educate over 30 million customers on COVID-19, daily safety tips using Ring Back Tones, SMS, Social Media etc.
- Optimization of remote channels such as customer care lines, digital platforms and others to reduce visit to service centres currently operating from 8am-2pm daily excluding weekends. List of operational service centres attached to release.
- Collaborating with the Bank of Ghana to offer free of charge Mobile Money transactions below GH¢100 to promote digital forms of payments and augment social distancing rules which reduce the rate of new infections.
- The industry fraud team is equally working assiduously with Internet experts, content providers and social media platforms to fight COVID-19 related fraud and misinformation on our networks.
GOVERNMENT INTERVENTIONS
- 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 INTERVENTIONS
- 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.