The National Communications Authority (NCA) last week fed the public with wrong data that was provided to it by Tigo Ghana.
The statistics which was published on the NCA’s website under the heading “Telecom Subscription Trends 2011” showed that Tigo Ghana, had lost nearly one million subscribers from between January and June 2011.
The data shows Tigo Ghana subscriber base dropping from 4,135,744 in February to 3,222,583 in June 2011, accounting for the loss of 913,191 subscribers.
According to the data, Expresso, the only provider on CDMA technology also lost 6,631 subscribers. In February it had 226,921 subscribers, but in June that fell to 220, 290 subscribers.
The other three operators however, gained subscribers during the same period.
Based on the data on the NCA’s website, ghanabusinessnews.com did a story, but later in the week, Tigo claimed the figures that it submitted to the NCA were wrong and that it was looking into it and would correct it.
Subsequently, Tigo sent a corrected version of its figures to the NCA, and it eventually corrected the information on its website.
In seeking clarification on the matter, ghanabusinessnews.com called up the NCA. According to NCA officials they normally ‘cross-checked’ the statistics provided by the mobile providers, but this time they did not, because the official whose responsibility it is to do so was unavailable and so the data was posted as it was. The NCA has access to the switches of the mobile providers.
Tigo on the other hand, tried to explain the issue simply as a ‘reporting error’ from its side in an email to ghanabusinessnews.com. The company says “We have validated our subscriber numbers and as at the end of June 2011, our total subscriber population over the 90-day reporting cycle was 4,102,156. We attribute this difference to a reporting error from Tigo, that has already been rectified.”
However, a source close to Tigo told ghanabusinessnews.com that the Tigo staff responsible for collecting and submitting the information to the NCA had left the company and the new staff who was put in charge sent the wrong data to the NCA.
From the new data available now on the NCA’s website, Tigo Ghana’s subscriber base for the month of June 2011 is 4,102,156, which shows that Tigo has lost 33,618 of the 4,135,774 of the subscribers it had as in February 2011.
By Emmanuel K. Dogbevi
Most of the statistics of this country carry a HUGE margin of error due to the incompetency demonstrated by NCA and Tigo above.
Africans.
Inn,
I think your remarks are unfair. The figures presented to date are largely reliable. Without naming which operator I work for, we knew straight away there was an error. The subscriber numbers at any one time are common knowledge to all operators by virtue of the connections which exist between all. Sometimes there are issues with reporting in this country as there are everywhere else, the helpful thing to do would be to suggest your solution to the problem. Stop putting the country down and do your bit, Maybe then our stats collection will improve.