As the 2017 International Telecommunications Union (ITU) Telecom World events in Busan, South Korea ends, West African countries in attendance are now counting what were in their bags.
Whereas Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) was honoured with the valuable partner Award for her commitment and participation, Ghanaian delegation led by National Communications Authority (NCA), read fresh deals with a number of investors in both telecoms and Digital Switch over (DSO).
The NCC’s award was contained in a certificate of appreciation signed by Mr. Houlin Zhao, ITU Secretary General, and issued to NCC at the end of the conference.
Besides, ITU honoured three Nigerian Innovators at the event including Valentine Ubalua, Temitope Awosika and Chizaram Ucheaga as they received the 2017 ITU Telecom World Recognition of Excellence Awards.
However, bordering on observed ease of doing business, Type Approval Program of the NCA attracted several foreign investors that attended the global event in Busan, South Korea.
Many of the IT firms including two South Korean-based laboratories made enquiries about testing for Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) receivers earmarked to be imported from South Korea to Ghana, and one of them, Dt&C actually requested for the procedure to apply for accreditation to do so.
Dt&C is a global electronic, electrical and ICT equipment testing company that tests a wide range of equipment for both industrial and domestic use.
The Korean Digital Switch over (DSO) giant, already have footprints in Africa, the Americas, Europe, Asia, the Middle East and the Oceania, and they want to test equipment such as televisions and decoders per NCA Type Approval standards before those equipment are even allowed to leave the ports of South Korea to Ghana.
DT&C is now planning to invest in Ghana based on the realization that the business case does not support the establishment of a specific lab for those tests locally so they would rather leverage existing labs abroad, particularly because most of the equipment to be tested are manufactured in those countries anyway.
Apart from other foreign investors in who expressed interest in Ghanaian telecoms and mainly 4G space, the head of Somalian delegation approached NCA authorities to help his country model its emerging telecoms regulatory agency just as the NCA base on series of good results it has recorded.
Business Hilights recalls that the Secretary General of Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation (CTO), Nigeria’s Shola Taylor had during the ITU event advised African telecoms regulators to learn from Ghana in other to achieve seamless regulatory effectiveness.
