OTT displacing international voice calls in Ghana as domestic calls, SMS gallop
Fresh statistics released by the National Communications Authority (NCA) on mobile calls between Ghana and the rest of the world show serious drop on both international incoming and outgoing mobile to mobile voice calls.
Besides, outbound international traffic for the same period also decreased marginally by 0.4 per cent from 178.95 million to 178.23 million minutes.
The year-on-year international voice traffic followed a similar trend with a 14 per cent slump in annual volume of inbound international traffic from 172.4 million minutes in the third quarter of 2015 to 148.3 million minutes in the third quarter of 2016.
Outbound international traffic also decreased by 24.4 million minutes (12.0 per cent), from 202.6 million minutes in the third quarter of 2015 to 178.2 million in the third quarter of 2016.
Rising traffic running into millions of minutes of calls going through over the top (OTT) channels like WhatsApp, Facebook, IMO, Viber, Tango, Skype and others, which users, both in Ghana and abroad, find more affordable, normal trunk (international) calls have continued to vanish.
The implications, according to telecoms expert are that OTT is gradually displacing international calls and the reason behind it is a case of technology disruptions.
Here in Nigeria, telecoms operators are apparently scheming on how best to tame the rising tide to limit what they described as erosion of income caused by interconnection termination rate.
Already, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has said it is working on reviewing the rate to keep the sub sector afloat.
According to the 2016 third quarter bulletin of the NCA, inbound international traffic decreased by 7.5 million minutes (4.8 per cent) from 155.8 million minutes in the third quarter of 2015 to 148.3 million minutes in the third quarter of 2016.
But on the domestic scene, there was an increase in voice traffic in the third quarter after it declined in the previous quarter as total voice traffic grew by 4.3 per cent from 14.80 billion minutes in the second quarter of 2016 to 15.44 billion minutes in the third quarter of 2016.
