Ms Mawuena Adzo Dumor, Corporate Service Executive of Mobile Telecommunications Network (MTN) Ghana, on Tuesday blamed the poor reception being experienced by the company's subscribers on the inadequacy of infrastructure it inherited. "This is the first time MTN has had to acquire already existing infrastructure from another brand and build on. In all the 20 other countries we operate in, we took off on a green field - from scratch so we had little or no network challenges," she said. She noted that running "a world class" telecommunications service on an infrastructure original intended for a smaller coverage area was a bigger challenge than starting from the scratch. 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 other things. Ms Dumor said in addition to the inadequacy of infrastructure inherited by MTN from Scancom, there were other bottlenecks such as delays in the acquisition of permits from institutions such as the District and Metropolitan Assemblies, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Ghana Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA) and others for the location of cell sites. "Subscribers also need to know that there are times when the problem is not one of technology but other external factors such as bad weather, dense vegetation, hilly or mountainous area interruptions which affect reception from time to time," she said Ms. Dumor said the company constantly conducted demographic surveys of communities to keep track of changing trends and make appropriate provisions. "Based on our findings in recently completed surveys, we are building on the existing infrastructure not only to satisfy the existing subscribers but also to accommodate our constantly increasing subscribers both now and in the future," she said. "Last year alone we invested 150 million dollars in network upgrading and this year we have invested 200 million dollars with an additional 35 million dollars specifically to speed up the upgrade and to improve on speech quality and enhance capacity," she said. She said between March 2006 and September 2007, MTN had increased its cell sites from a little over 550 to over a 1,000 across the country and that each site had been provided with additional high capacity Basic Transmission Stations that carried millions of calls to or from the network at any given time, and thereby prevent jams. She said in order to ensure quality service for its subscribers across the country, MTN was working with other players in the industry to look at the possibility of co-location of cell sites to serve especially the rural folk. "We have also been honouring our commitment to the Ghana Investment Fund for Telecommunications (GIFTEL) to enable the fund to provide the necessary facilities for telephony services to reach our rural folk," she said. Source: GNA