The bosses of the existing five telecom operators in Ghana have expressed varying opinions about the entry of the sixth operator, Glo, into the market. Whiles some say the Ghanaian market is not ready for a sixth operator, others are of the opinion that opportunities for growth still exist in the Ghanaian market for a sixth operator. Glo has just launched its number reservation campaign that allows one million people to reserve special numbers on Glo’s 023 networks. But that is just one of many events planned to culminate in the launch of the actual commercial services possibly later this month when “a handsome number of people had registered their numbers on Glo.” Long before now, industry players, observers and some policy makers did not make a secret of their opinion that Ghana is too small a market and so near saturation to accommodate six multinational telecom operators, and that, even five operators is one too many. In spite of those opinions, government granted license to Glo some two years ago and the company has since invested more than $750million in the country without getting a pesewa back. But as a result of that investment, Glo is the first operator to start operations at almost 100% coverage, with latest broadband technology, Next Generation Network, over 1,600 state-of-the-art Base Transceiver Stations (BTS), four ultra modern Switches with capacity for up to 10 million lines with congestion-free service, 18 Base Switching Centres (BSC), 800 3G Node Bs, an ultra-modern Call Centre and 25 GloWorld outlets, and its one fibre optic backbone, Glo One. Glo has only now begun the process towards the actual launch of commercial services in Ghana, and some CEO’s of the existing telecom operators in Ghana said they respect Glo for the ‘gargantuan’ investment , but are not sure if “this difficult market” has much options for Glo. At least two of the telecom CEOs, Philip Sowah of Airtel Ghana and Carlos Caceres of Tigo Ghana spoke with Adom News on a range of issues regarding the entry of a sixth operator, whiles the other three telecom CEO’s have been quoted in another publication from separate interviews they had with some unnamed international media about Glo. Both Philip Sowah and Carlos Caceres disagreed with the opinion that the market is saturated and does not have many options for a sixth operator. Carlos Caceres was of the opinion that the market always has opportunities for companies that offer competitive service, adding “in a dynamic industry like this one, every day, new business opportunities are appearing.” Caceres said competition is always good to the extent that it benefits consumers, adding that there is still room to grow in the Ghanaian market, but the operators who offer the best value proposal to consumers would be the winners. He however noted that even though Glo is taking off on a strong infrastructural backbone, it has to complement that by competitive tariffs, great customer service and by satisfying customer needs. In terms of tariff, Tigo currently offers the lowest subscribed on-net call tariff of 3Gp, whiles majority of operators offer 8.4Gp per minute and some higher. There is also the ‘138’ promotional offer on Vodafone that could offer as low as 1Gp per minute on weekends. Glo has promised to start on an aggressive note, but the question has been how aggressive Glo can get in terms of tariffs, competing with as low as 3Gp on-net on Tigo and Vodafone’s promotional 1Gp per minute.