Mobile phone users in Ghana will from January 2020 enjoy free international roaming communication throughout the West African sub-region without any extra charges, APA learnt Friday.
This comes into effect years after the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) approved the decision in 2017.
Ghana’s parliament earlier this week approved an amendment to the Electronic Communication Act to make this move possible.
Speaking to Citi News on Friday in Accra, the Minister for Communication Ursula Owusu-Ekuful said, “two years ago, Ministers of Communication and ICT within the West African sub-region met and agreed that the surcharge on international roaming traffic within the sub-region be removed so that travelers within the sub-region who are citizens of ECOWAS will roam like they are at home to facilitate regional integration.”
She added: “We were given two years within which we had to make that operational. And that two years end in December 2019. So this directive comes into effect in January 2020. Ghana is one of the few countries that puts surcharge on international call so we needed to exempt intra-community traffic within the ECOWAS sub-region”.
The Electronic Communications (Amendment) (Act 775) (2009) is to provide a minimum rate for international incoming electronic communication traffic and for related matters.
DAP/as/APA