Next-Gen Infra Co (NGIC) plans to start operations by the end of this year and will provide 5G broadband services to mobile operators and ISPs in Ghana.
The company will be provided with basic network infrastructure, applications and smartphones from Radisys Corp, a unit of Reliance Industries Ltd, owned by the richest man in Asia Mukesh Ambani.
Other strategic partners in NGIC include; Nokia Oyj, Indian foreign partner Tech Mahindra Ltd., and Microsoftwhich has increasingly sharpened its focus on the telecom business after acquiring two cloud networking companies in 2020.
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Ghana currently has three main operators: MTN, Telecel Ghana (formerly Vodafone), and state IN GHANA (formerly AirtelTigo).
Between the lines
Two African telecommunications companies — Ascend Digital Solutions Ltd. and K-NET — hold a combined 55% stake in the new company.
The Government of Ghana will only have below 10% of NGIC, while local mobile operators and private investors will retain the remaining shares in the company.
NGIC has the exclusive right to offer 5G services in Ghana for a decade, although its license is valid for 15 years. Capital expenditure of the company for three years it’s $145 million.
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The company is trying to emulate the success of Ambani’s Jio Infocomm Ltd. in India. Jio launched telecom services in India in late 2016 with low-cost data and free voice calls, forcing some competitors to close and others to consolidate.
It is widely acknowledged to have made mobile data affordable to hundreds of millions of Indians. Jio is currently India’s largest mobile operator with 470 million users.
What they say
The company “based on a premise of creating affordable digital services in emerging markets,” he said Harkirit Singhthe executive director of NGIC.
NGIC will provide “affordable broadband and mobile devices for Ghanaians, replicating the success of India’s low-cost mobile data revolution”, Minister of Communications and Digitization of Ghana Ursula Owusu-Ekuful he said in a statement.
Source: Bloomberg
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