Cable theft costs Vodafone GH₵2million annually

CEO of Vodafone Ghana Kyle Whitehill has disclosed that the company loses as much as GH₵2million annually through cable theft and damage to cables through road construction, saying the situation is “very frustrating”.

Speaking to journalists on a tour of some sites, the Vodafone boss said in August alone 34 “mega cables” were stolen by people he suspects have worked for the company before.

“These are guys who know my network. They probably used to work for us. You have to be able to get into the chamber and you have to know where to cut,” he said.

Some of the mega cables, he said, could carry as much as 2500 smaller cables representing the same number of customers. This means that the affected customers are cut off while it could take up to three months to replace a cable.

During the tour on Wednesday, November 21, 2012, technicians of the company were seen at various locations in Accra undertaking repair works as a result of cable theft and damages resulting from constructional works.

Kenneth Arthur, a Field Telecoms Manager at Vodafone, told journalists that about 28% of the company’s installations around the country have been tampered with at one time or another, leading to over 2,000 customers being cut off for at least a month.

In October, Ghana Police arrested two young men who were spotted digging up Vodafone cables at Mile 7 near Achimota -- and the cases are not limited to Accra.

“There are places in Tamale we have been told are no-go areas for the police because of hardened criminals in those areas -- so if they are no-go areas for the police, why should we keep putting our equipment there?” Kyle Whitehill said.

Bandits dig up communications cables because of their copper content which has a high market value. Vodafone has, in a bid to provide faster service to customers, replaced many of these cables with fibre which is hardly worth anything on the market. However, cable thieves still cut the fibre is search of copper.

Meanwhile, Kyle Whitehill said the company has invested GH¢50million to deploy a new and modern technology known as Multi Service Access Nodes (MSANs), which will allow the company to provide “super-fast Internet” to people’s homes.  

He said 60% of customers have been moved onto the new service while the remaining 40% are still served by the old copper network.

“The evolution of the network has been about getting closer to the customer with this MSANS technology and providing much faster service,” he said.

Four years ago, he said, the company had 5,000 customers with fixed broadband service, a figure which has moved to a current level of 79,000.

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