Wednesday November 21, K-NET Limited, a Ghana and sub-Saharan Africa network solutions provider operating throughout launched mobile voice and data connectivity for the first-time, a move that will benefit rural communities.
K-NET built 10 mobile communication towers to run on Tigo Ghana. The project was funded by the Ghana Investment Fund for Electronic Communication (GIFEC).Haruna Iddrisu, the minister of communications in Ghana said he expected the facilities to attract investors to the rural areas and them up for more business opportunities and improve education in schools.
According to K-NET a single mobile tower can serve up to 300km2, or neraly several townships. The country’s stats show that 143 000km2 (60%) of the land area and 5 million of the population (20%) have no mobile coverage.The last of the mobile towers was set up by K-NET in July and launched Wednesday but have received high traffic and have been growing by more than 25 percent. K-NET says some of the towers carry over 250 000 minutes of voice traffic a month, and over 15,000 SMS messages.
K-NET Limited partnered with Altobridge, Ameresco Solar, iDirect and Tigo. The firms have together developed a highly innovative solution which is optimised for rural applications and reduces the total costs of ownership by up to 65 percent compared to a conventional solution, meaning that rural communities with relatively low population densities of less than 1 500 people may now be served profitably by the mobile network operators.
Speaking at the inauguration in Botoku, Ghana CEO of K-NET,Michael Darcy said, “K-NET is proud to be working with GIFEC, Tigoand its other partners to bring mobile services to rural communities such as Botoku, to enrich the quality of life for individuals and to enable small businesses to operate more efficiently.”The partnership has seen the development of solutions such as 3G Base Station Subsystem by Altobridge, a Solar Power Solution by Ameresco Solar, a satellite communication equipment by iDirect and Tigo.K-NET also using its Teleport at McCarthy Hill in Accra provides Tigo’s communication links between its remote sites and the central switching network and also does operations, service and network management for Tigo.
