MTN drags NCA to court

Telecommunication giant, MTN, has dragged the National Communication Authority to court over attempts by the regulator to break up the near-monopoly of the company.

In a statement, MTN said despite consultations with NCA, the company was left with no choice than to resort to the court to seek redress.

MTN described the government’s move as “unfair” and said the decision to go to court, was a “difficult” move.

This comes after the Ministry of Communications announced on June 9, 2020 that the telecommunication industry was facing “glaring disparities” and “imbalances” which it said was unhealthy for competition.

According to a statement signed by the Minister of Communications, Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, the new policies were meant to correct the imbalance in the telecommunication market.

The statement indicated that the NCA would, among others, apply the measures, including asymmetrical interconnect rate in favour of the disadvantaged operators, in the exercise of its regulatory mandate.

The NCA said it would also set floor pricing on all minutes, data, SMS and Mobile Money, and review and approve all pricing by the SMP as required by law.

It added that it would insist that SMP did not have differential prices for on-net and off-net transactions while ensuring that various operator vendors were not subjected to exclusionary pricing or behaviour.