Vodafone Ghana, Lynk ink satellite-to-phone deal

Lynk Global, a satellite-direct-to-standard-phone telecoms company, has signed a commercial contract with Telecel Group in Africa to provide services to Vodafone Ghana's subscribers.

The contract has the potential to provide mobile coverage to 100% of Ghana's 31 million citizens using Lynk's "cell towers in space".

According to Lynk, its cell towers in space will enable Telecel Group to offer geographic coverage to over 6 million Vodafone Ghana subscribers and will be utilized for extending rural coverage.

"It will also include Maritime Economic Zone, as a backup to ensure service resilience, continuity of IoT devices, and as a terrestrial tower replacement for underperforming economical or technical towers," the company said in a statement.

"This agreement extends Lynk's leadership in the satellite-direct-to-standard-phone category in Africa and is an important milestone as interest in the category continues to heat up," added Lynk CEO Charles Miller.

Vodafone Ghana CEO Patricia Obo-Nai explained that the partnership provided the opportunity to connect Ghanaians and accelerate the benefits that connectivity offers in health, education, and job creation, especially for women and the youth.

Telecel Group's Vodafone takeover

The announcement comes after Vodafone in February 2023, completed the sale of its 70% shareholding in Vodafone Ghana to Telecel Group for an undisclosed sum.

The deal had been on the cards since August 2022 but saw a few hurdles along the way, with the Ghanaian regulator initially rejecting the proposed deal.

Lynk's cell towers in space will provide mobile coverage to over 6 million Vodafone Ghana subscribers. (Source: Image by wirestock on Freepik)

Following that takeover, Vodafone Ghana has leveraged the partnership between Lynk and Telecel Group to provide innovative services as well as mobile coverage across Ghana's rural areas.

Lynk added that it is currently testing satellite direct-to-standard-mobile-phone services in more than a dozen countries claiming that it is the only company in the world to have successfully sent and received text messages to and from space via unmodified standard mobile devices.

Ghana's mobile market

It will be interesting to see how the deal will impact Vodafone Ghana subscribers, especially since Vodafone had been struggling over the years to steal market share from rival MTN.

Vodafone is the second biggest mobile operator in the country, as per statistics from Omdia, a sister company of Connecting Africa. Omdia puts Vodafone Ghana's mobile users at almost 7.8 million at the end of 2022, which is around 18% market share in the country.

MTN Ghana, remains the most dominant operator with about 28.6 million users, or 67% of market share &ndash for now. AirtelTigo Ghana was close behind Vodafone with almost 5.9 million mobile subscribers and Glo Mobile had just over 350,000 users at the end of last year.

Furthermore, the deactivation of mobile users who have not completed a government-mandated SIM registration process as of March 10, 2023, by Ghana's National Communications Authority (NCA), could also add a spanner in the works for Vodafone Ghana subscribers.

Ghana's SIM registration process began back in October 2021 and has two parts. In stage one, citizens need to link their national identity document called a "Ghana Card" to their SIM cards.

Stage two requires citizens to scan their biometrics at a physical store or by using a self-service mobile SIM registration app that was launched in August 2022.

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*Top image source: Image by ASphotofamily on Freepik.

— Matshepo Sehloho, Associate Editor, Connecting Africa