National Communications Authority Report on data subscriptions and data volumes for the second quarter of 2016 indicate that Surfline alone is moving way more data than Tigo and Glo combined,

The report, captured in the first edition of the NCA’s Quarterly Statistical Bulletin on Communications in Ghana, indicates that with just 81,325 4G LTE customers, Surfline carried about 2.3million GB of data as of June ending this year, representing 85.1% of the Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) data market share.

Meanwhile, Tigo, which has over 2.7million data customers is moving only 1.3million GB of data as of June 2016, and Glo, with almost 300,000 data customers, is moving a meagre 89,151GB of data same period.

In effect, even though the customers of Surfline constitute just a minute fraction of Tigo and Glo's data customers, the amount of data it moves is almost twice what the two telcos move together.

This confirms earlier claims by the Ghana ICT Chamber that the BWA players are moving more data than some of the traditional telcos, who have been here for years and command millions of customers.

Meanwhile, the total number of subscribers in the BWA space reached 109,124 at the close of Q2 2016, which is next to nothing, compared with the 18.8million data customers of the traditional telcos.

Out of the 109,124 BWA subscriptions, Surfline tops with a whopping 81,325 customers representing 74.5 percent market share; Broadband Home (BBH) is next with 26,536 customers, representing 24.3 per cent, and Blu Telecoms comes in with just 1,263 customers; a meagre 1.2 percent market share.

In terms of the amount of data they each moved over the period in question, it is interesting to find that both BBH and Blu moved more data each than Glo did.

With just a little over 26,000 customers, BBH moved 291,928GB of data, while Blu, with just 1,263 customers, accounted for 103,878GB of data, compared to Glo's meagre 89,000GB.

This seems to give credence to the argument that, if the regulator had given the BWA players some time, they would have probably done much better than some of the mainstream telcos, which have been here longer and command way more customers.

Decline

Meanwhile, like Glo, Blu lost customers every quarter from the second quarter of 2015 till Q2 2016. Its customer base declined 52.6% over the period.

That explains why some of the top telecom executives who left other telcos and joined Blu at its inception, quickly jumped ship and returned to other mainstream telcos.

Obviously, the fourth BWA licensee, Goldkey Telecoms is nowhere to be found in the report; and there was nothing on Busy Ghana either, even though the company was adjudged 4G player of the year 2015 at the recent Ghana Information Technology and Telecommunications Awards (GITTA).

Usage per person

In terms of data usage per subscriber, there was an up and down trend in terms of the growth in the BWA space. The period began with 14.68GB per user in Q2 2015 and finished with 24.27GB per user Q2 2016.

This means, on the average, each user is using more BWA data now than they did a year ago.

Meanwhile, in the GSM 3G space, data consumption per user also grew from an average of 452.84MB in Q2 2015, to 815.72MB as at June 2016.

In terms of penetration, however, the BWA space constitute an insignificant 0.4 per cent penetration into an estimated population of 27.7million, while the mainstream telcos have penetrated the country's population by over 136 per cent.