There is little doubt that the telecommunications revolution in Ghana has really boosted business. The proliferation of cellular phones, littering of our cities with Ghana Telecom (GT) and Westel booths within close distances, and the establishment of Communication centres have enhanced contacts between people within the last ten years. These have been complemented by the numerous mobile phone companies that have sprung up all over the place.

A truism in this is the advert by a mobile phone company in which a taxi driver asserts that since he acquired a mobile phone, he no longer goes about looking for passengers.

"All my clients can get me easily. Now business is good", the advert ends. That is the reality of the telecommunications industry in Ghana today.

While Ghanaians may be enjoying the enhanced facilities of the telecommunications boom, they are none the less feeling the pinch of the high service charges they come with. This is more acute when one has to make a call from a fixed phone to a cellular phone. This is because GT does not as yet operate a mobile phone service and none of the numerous cellular phone service providers are into fixed phones.

A caller using a fixed phone facility of the GT to call a cellular phone will have to pay 1,800 cedis for the first three minutes as against 200 cedis for a call between two fixed phones connected through GT.

Some people argue that the high rates are Ghana Telecom’s way of exploiting users while to others GT is demonstrating her deliberate intention to frustrate cellular phone agencies from effective competition. There are yet those who believe the high GT-mobile rates are exploitations from the communication centres.

A visit to some communication centres in Accra revealed that GT-GT user charge averages 700 cedis for the first three minutes for intra-city calls while for GT-Cellular phones it is 1,000 cedis for the first minute with an additional 600 cedis charge per an added minute. For the first three minutes therefore, a caller using a GT - Cellular facility will have to pay 2,200 cedis as against 700 cedis for the same period when the hook up is from one GT facility to the other.

Asked to explain the huge difference in the charges, Nana Kwaku Duah, a communication centre operator at Pig Farm, was emphatic that the issue was not the doing of he and his colleagues. He quoted 200 cedis per unit of four minutes and 600 cedis per minute as GT’s respective charges for the communication centres for GT-GT calls on one hand and GT-Cellular connections on the other.

"The quotes, as I have offered you means we’re charged 1,800 cedis per three minutes by Ghana Telecom for a GT-Cellular call. The high charges are therefore not our making but GT as is clearly evidenced", grey-haired Nana Duah said.

Nana’s analysis should suffice to clear doubts about com. centres’ alleged exploitation of the masses. I’d reminded him however that that’s the assertion of a part of the public. Profits; abnormal profits at their expense. To this, my host retorted, "If they’ll not take the trouble to find out what is happening then it should be their own headache. My business is in the ‘red’ today as a result of competition and they are talking of communication centres exploiting them," he said.

When Mr. Osbert Kissiedu of H-cross Communication Centre at Caprice Junction (near Accra New-town) was reached he expressed similar sentiments. " It’s absolutely false that communication centres are ‘milking’ their GT-Mobile linked customers. The situation on the ground however is that as a result of the high charge on that connection we do not receive many customers requesting for the service and, if our intentions were to be profit oriented it would have been bad business practice on our part".

In any case, are the GT right in offering the high charges for GT-Cellular users? Why opt for what looks scary and are they justified?

To get answers for these l approached Mr. Apau Brefo-Kwakye, Manager in charge of Billings at GT who explained that the moment the company offers its telephone services in ‘units’ that are billed for 200 cedis but which are distance and time dependent.

Additionally, the connecting medium is also given a consideration. Accordingly, intra-city calls on GT-GT connecting line has a four minute unit and a five minute unit respectively for peak and off-peak periods.

For trunk calls, a unit measure is determined on how far the destination is from Accra. Thus while Accra-Nkawkaw has a unit of two minutes and thirty seconds at 200 cedis, Accra-Kumasi enjoys a unit of one minute and thirty seconds. In the particular case of GT-Cellular phone connection Mr Brefo-Kwakye said one unit is structured at 20 seconds and is billed for 200 cedis.

GT-GT calls Mr Brefo-Kwakye had explained to be comparatively cheaper because it involves same house connection.

With regard to GT-Mobile calls Mr Brefo-Kwakye had attributed the unit quotation to two main reasons. Firstly, it involves an inter-connection from a GT mainstream into that of the cellular network that is being used for which he says GT must pay. "That isn’t for free and GT must pay for the service."

The second reason is because GT-mobile calls are deemed to be special services which attract 'special' rates. The advantage of a mobile phone is that the person being called could be reached wherever he may be. "This is a special service and those who want to make use of it must pay for it," he said.

He debunked the assertion by a section of the public that GT harboured the idea of frustrating the mobile agencies. "What for"? he retorted adding that, "at the end of the day we all want to see Ghanaian businesses flourish".

GRi…/