The National Communications Authority (NCA) has expanded its satellite licensing regime to include recent broadband satellite services, according to the Director General at NCA, Dr. Joe Anokye.
At a media briefing on Sunday, March 24, to update the country on the recent internet disruptions occasioned by the undersea cable cuts, Mr. Anokye indicated that the Authority “has been forward-looking” over the last 10 years.
“We did not have a framework until recently, the hardworking engineering team…put together one of the very important frameworks so we are now ready; the board has approved the framework, so NCA is ready to entertain applications from satellite broadband,” he stated.
As a forward-looking entity, Mr. Anokye said, “The NCA has augmented our existing satellite licensing portfolio to include recent broadband satellite services to provide alternative connectivity options for domestic and enterprise users.”
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He further noted that “currently, the NCA has the v-SAT satellite services being around for many years,” serving several financial institutions.
“Until 2020 or so, the Electoral Commission (EC) exclusively relied on the v-SAT to connect all the district offices so this is a service that is still available,” said Dr. Joe Anokye.
He also noted that the bandwidth involved, as far as the v-SAT satellite is concerned, is much smaller, forcing institutions to migrate to other broadband satellite services.
Background
All mobile and fixed data services went down nationwide in the early hours of Thursday, March 14.
The internet disruption brought several activities to a halt, with mobile network operators (MNOs) running on minimal data capacity.
According to the National Communications Authority, Ghana lost about 1,596.6 Gbps of data capacity owing to multiple undersea cable cuts.
Read also: Undersea cable cut: Telcos are bringing other capacities into the country – Ken Ashigbey
However, MTN Ghana announced on March 18 that it had secured additional network capacity from its international partners, resulting in an improvement in data connectivity.
MTN Ghana promised its clients that it was examining all possibilities to alleviate the data difficulties they were facing.