Elorm Gustav Tamakloe
The Broadband Communications Chamber (BBC), in its quest to help revamp the outdated National Broadband Policy and Implementation Strategy, will host the maiden Broadband Ghana Forum on November 30, this year.
The event will see industry players, policy makers and experts from the communications ecosystem deliberating on ways of bringing the five-year-old policy up to speed with current industry developments.
It would also seek ways and strategies of effective improving broadband penetration and usage in line with government’s digital inclusion agenda and the United Nations recommendations.
Themed, “Broadband: The Catalyst for Sustainable Socio-economic Development,” the forum is under the auspices of the Ministry of Communications.
Minister of Communications, Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, recently charged BBCC to initiate a national discourse towards the review of the policy to bring it up to speed with the times.
Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Broadband Communications Chamber (BBCC), Elorm Gustav Tamakloe, told journalists that Ghana’s current broadband policy has failed to live up to expectation because it has been outpaced by industry developments.
“The Chamber believes that Ghana’s current 2012 Broadband Policy and Implementation Strategy has lost the fundamentals in turbo-charging our socio-economic future. It has lost the ability to meet the national broadband needs and has not been able to deliver fast and affordable Broadband to Ghana,” he stated.
Gustav Tamakloe noted that the existing policy failed to adequately address very key industry issues such as 4G LTE, measurement of broadband penetration and other factors that would help investors to take informed decisions.
On the attainment of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Tamakloe commented: “Last year, the UN Broadband Commission in a report issued a challenge to policymakers, the private sector and other partners, to make deployment of Broadband infrastructure a top priority in their strategies to accelerate global development and progress towards the UN Sustainable Development Goals,” he said.
Whereas the UN report indicated how broadband is driving significant transformation in lots of sectors that are related to development such as health, food security, financial inclusion and education, it is disappointing that Ghana is still not utilizing it enough as a stimulant for socio-economic development, he noted.
“Sadly, Ghana is losing out. Ghana is being left behind. With approximately 9.9 million users, representing 34.7% of about 29 million population, we can either choose to continue to do nothing or we can seize the Broadband opportunity as a catalyst for Ghana’s sustainable socio-economic development,” he said.