GT Relocates Payphones To Deprived Communities

By Stephen K. Effah
Wednesday, 13 February 2008

Although the advent of mobile phones and their increasing availability is perceived by the general public as a huge blessing, it is having a heavy toll on Ghana Telecom’s (GT) payphones in the country.

Due to the extensive penetration of mobile phones in the country, patronage of GT payphones has reduced drastically in recent years.

Disclosing this to the Times in an interview in Accra yesterday, Joseph Wireko, Manager of Marketing Communications in charge of Fixed Network Services of GT, said the company as a result, is relocating 40 per cent of its public payphones countrywide to schools, hospitals and deprived communities for better utilisation.

However, GT also operates a mobile phone system known as One-touch.On the state of payphones and their patronage in the wake of mobile phone penetration, he stated that payphones are no more economical, saying "we are not making profit from them.

"Payphones have come against heavy competition which we cannot close our eyes to. In the current competitive industry, it has come under severe pressure because of the impact of mobile phones," he pointed out.

Although, he said, the company is not making profit from payphones GT does not deem it appropriate to phase them out since they are indispensable, especially in emergency situations.

Mr.Wireko said that there are two phone cards of the company designed for fixed lines which can also be used on payphones apart from the normal cards for the payphones.

That, he explained, gives people who have those phone cards the opportunity to use payphones at anytime, especially in emergency cases where one has run out of mobile phone credit or battery.

He said the relocation exercise which started last October, will see 20 per cent of the payphones being moved to schools and hospitals and other strategic locations nationwide.

He said 10 per cent would also be taken to deprived communities where GT have existing fixed lines system in place, noting that additional 10 per cent, which would be a GSM (a digital telephone system for transmitting mobile voice and data) based powered by solar energy, would also be sent to communities without fixed lines.

Mr Wireko said that the GT is hoping to add more value to payphones in the future, for example by the addition of voice mail, noting that one can receive calls on payphones which is an advantage to those in deprived communities.