By Mohamed Jaward Nyallay
Outreach Officer, Ministry of Information and Civic Education
The Director General of the National Telecommunication Authority, Amara Brewah has announced a major reform that will transform pricing structure for telecommunication companies in the country. DG Brewah made the announcement on Tuesday during the weekly government press briefing on Tuesday.
He said a Cost Study has been completed, which will have a potential impact on tariff prices.
“With the help of the Ministry, we have just completed a Cost Study. A Cost Study takes in to account everything the mobile companies spend in providing the services they are providing now. This will help us in determining how much they should charge the consumer, like a pricing formula,” DG Brewah said.
He said the pricing system will be adopted and it will be reviewed periodically.
DG Brewah said NaTCA will not give in on its commitment to quality service for consumers. He said the authority’s role is delicate, because it has to consider three different players; consumers, investors and government.
“As we are carrying out our mandate we have three groups of people to please; the first person is the consumer. We need to make sure the consumers are happy with the services the operator is providing,”
Speaking on quality of service, he said: “Quality of Service is a big issue, I know you are all concerned about this, but NaTCA is on top of this situation, we are working on it very hard.”
Part of their job as a regulator they have to engage with all the service providers on improving quality, when the engagement fails then they can now take action.
Last week the authority, fined Orange Sierra Leone, a telecommunication company $1 million for the poor network service.
“We got to a point where we said, these people need to take the people of Sierra Leone seriously, so we had to fine them.”
He said despite the fine, NaTCA has always been open to have a constructive conversation with operators on the challenges they face and how government can help them with that.
DG Brewah who was just appointed last year has done a lot in his new role, he thanked the Ministry of Communication for its support in doing their work.
“When the Ministry is putting together the policy framework, our own job as regulator is to make sure the price is affordable no matter where you are,” he said.
DG Brewah also gave a major update on 5G technology which will focus on data: “5G technology is at the trial phase, the operators are working hard to get that in place. We have Star Link, they are now in the country and the good thing is they don’t have a heavy infrastructure, they just install and you connect.”
Orange and Africell have both tapped in to the 5G space with government providing a conducive environment for the technology to thrive.
