Mobile phone subscription in the country hit the seven million mark at the end of December last year, official figures have shown. Data from the Ghana's telecom regulator, National Communication Authority (NCA) shows that the total number of mobile subscribers increased by 8.4 per cent from 7,016,707 recorded for the third quarter of last year to 7,604,053 as at the fourth quarter of 2007, a situation that has sparked interest in the delivery of mobile phone contents to boost revenue. The figures released by the NCA do not necessarily mean that seven million people in Ghana have mobile phones but indicate the number of active subscribers in the country especially as one person could use more than one chip (SIMcard). However, industry experts fear the sector could soon reach a saturation point as subscription growth rate slows. For instance, mobile phone subscriptions increased by 12.4 per cent from 5,627,861 recorded from the first quarter of last year to 6,323,510 in the second quarter as against 8.4 per cent increase for the last quarter. Currently, there are six voice telephony operators in the country recording a total teledensity of about 25 per cent with Ghana Telecom and Western Telecommunication Systems (Westel) as the only fixed lines providers. MTN still leads the mobile subscription chart with more than 4,016,132 subscribers as at the end of 2007 followed closely by tiGo with 2,023,091 while Onetouch and Kasapa trail by 1,275,764 and 289,066 subscribers respectively. Millicom Ghana Limited, operators of tiGO mobile network were the highest gainer in the subscription rate recording 426,640 subscribers between September and December last year as against 143,743 subscribers for MTN. Kasapa recorded 21,456 new subscribers in the•period under review but Onetouch, the mobile arm of Ghana Telecom• recorded negative deviation of 4,493 as the number of its subscribers dropped from 1,280,257 to 1 ,275,764 at the end of 2007. This indicates that 4,493 subscribers have either moved from the Onetouch network to another, stopped or have had their lines cut or deactivated from the network. Analysts have attributed the poor performance of Onetouch and MTN to the poor services provided by the two mobile firms, which forced the NCA to issue directives to the two service providers to halt new access line activations until their networks were appropriately dimensioned to take an additional capacity within between October and November last year. Since MTN acquired Investcom, owners of Scancom in March 2006, its service has worsened with continued call drops cross calls, speech mutation, and wrong voice prompts, among others. However, MTN says it has committed US$200 million towards an expansion project in its first year of operation in the country, but this has not translated into quality service delivery. Analysts believe the growth in tiGO subscriber base is as a result of the fact that some subscribers are migrating to the tiGO network due mainly to their effective marketing strategies as well as well trained engineers, efficient monitoring tools and key performance indicators comparable to international standards. NCA says it is stepping up efforts to monitor and evaluate the performance of the country's telecom service providers in a bid to improve performance. Source: B&FT