KOFI ANOKYE OWUSU-DARKO (BLOG 1)

Introduction My first concern on monitoring the telecommunication industry with respect to E-money development by way of Mobile-Money was in my article in the Ghanaian Times (November 2009) captioned “Regulating E-Money: Watch and Monitor the Telecommunication and IT Companies”. This article is available on my blogspot: kofianokye.blogspot.com published June 2011 and if you have time I recommend you kindly take a quick glance at it for a different perspective that may enrich your appreciation of my concern. I am tempted to re-echo the issue of regulation after reading in the BF&T a news extra captioned “Airtel Launches online shopping portal” indicating that Airtel has recently launched Airtel Money Market, an e-commerce website and online shopping platform that allows its customers to use their mobile money (m-money) wallets to purchase goods and services from participating merchants. For this particular platform if what the consumer saw on the website is not what was p

INTRODUCTION Registration of SIM cards by users has become an obligation after the directive by the National Communication Authority (NCA) and all telecommunication service users have been given a deadline and ultimatum to register or be cut off from the service. The principle of registration of SIM cards is a laudable idea which is in the interest of the ordinary Ghanaian not only to protect ourselves but to be able to receive the kind of personalized services that technology can bring because we can be identified with the ownership of the SIM. Like any personal data collection exercise it comes with its own a likely abuse of the collected data which may put the very Ghanaian in whose interest the registration is being done at grave risk especially with the absence of a Data Protection Act. Countries that have done this like South Africa have put in place a sector specific law “The Regulation of Interception of Communications and Provision of Communication-Related Information Act (RI

Introduction Telecommunication is a commercial service but one which is somewhat different from other services in the sense that service supply has social concerns and as such issues of consumer rights, universal service/access, interoperability, standardisation of infrastructure, anti-competitive trading practices, dispute resolution, transparency, information sharing, fair competition, charges and quality of services of telecommunication providers calls for a sector-specific regulatory body or agency to enforce any general related or specific legal provisions. In the past, telecommunication operations have been owned by governments with government officials responsible for policy formulation, regulation by way of policy implementation and the actual operations of the telephone services. With the liberalisation of telecommunication there has been the need to re-organise the structure by separating policy, regulatory and operational functions of telecommunication and the National Com