An expert in the telecommunication industry is revealing that how we consume data in Ghana is actually a significant part of the high cost of internet data in the country.
Many Ghanaians have complained over the high cost of mobile data which has become an everyday need. Numerous campaigns and protests have been staged over the years to demand that the authorities reduce the cost of data in the country.
On the back of these calls, the Minister for Communications, Samuel Nartey George has inaugurated a committee to find strategies that can help the ministry to reduce the cost of mobile data.
A member of the committee and the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Ghana Chamber of Telecommunications, Dr. Ing. Kenneth Ashigbey says the heavy reliance on servers and international internet gateways hosted outside Ghana is driving up the cost of data for everyone.
Speaking to the media at the launch of the committee, Dr. Ken Ashigbey disclosed that, “the way we consume data contributes to the cost of it. The fact that we don’t have most of our servers sitting here, and for basic services that we have to do, we don’t use our internal system, but we have to go on to the international gateways. All of those things contribute to the cost of data.”
Dr. Ing. Kenneth Ashigbey
How Does this Happen?
In simple terms, imagine you’re in Accra, trying to watch a YouTube video or check your emails on Gmail. Instead of your request being processed by a local server in Ghana, it travels across undersea fiber-optic cables to servers in the United States or Europe before coming back to your phone.
Experts say that’s a long and expensive journey, and every time this happens, Ghanaian internet service providers (ISPs) pay fees to international network operators for access. These costs are then passed down to consumers in the form of higher data prices.
With this, it means every time internet users scroll through TikTok, binge-watch Netflix or store their files on Google Drive instead of a local cloud service, we are increasing demand for international bandwidth.
The situation isn’t about just the social media platforms. Experts have noticed some Ghanaian institutions such as banks and even government agencies use cloud storage and software that are hosted abroad, which means their everyday operations contribute to these international data costs.
Addressing the Situation
The surest way to eliminate this hidden data cost is the encouragement of more local hosting of websites, apps, and cloud services.
The experts say if more websites and services were hosted on local servers, the data request would take a much shorter route, reducing international bandwidth costs and potentially making internet services more affordable.
The high cost of data in Ghana isn’t just about taxes or telecom companies charging too much, it’s also about how we, as consumers, interact with the digital world.
The more we rely on foreign-hosted services, the higher the costs we will continue to pay.
Source: thehighstreetjournal.com
