Vodafone affirms commitment to address customer concerns

Vodafone Ghana has re-affirmed its commitment to provide the right customer service despite the persistent complaints from its clientele with regard to the company’s decision to cap fixed broadband usage.
It says although the company is being touted as charging exorbitantly for data usage on the fixed broadband network in recent times, measures being employed are geared towards making it compete favourably in the market.
Addressing the media in Accra, the Head of Consumer Marketing at Vodafone Ghana, Mr Tara Squire, said the ongoing agitation by the various consumer groups with respect to the broadband service stemmed from an increase in the charges as well as switching from unlimited access to specified data usage.
He said businesses and Internet café owners using the service were paying the same as home users whose average data consumption was only about 7GB a month, something which he said was unfair to the home users.
The company has thus introduced a fixed broadband package which offers an unlimited fixed broadband service specifically designed for the high data consumption for these businesses at GH¢180.
He said the move was to ensure fairness in payment for data usage as people most at times burned more data than what they were actually paying for, which is a loss to the company, looking at the cost incurred in installation and maintenance of the internet usage.
Vodafone Ghana, he said, had thus resorted to capping so that customers who used beyond the specified limit would pay commercial prices so those who used less would also be given a fair opportunity to get value for what they paid for.
He said the company capped higher than the average usage of data by consumers and were giving them the opportunity to still have access to the Internet so they could go about their normal businesses.
Currently, the telecommunication company is offering 15 gigabyte of data on the fixed broadband service for GH¢65, 25 gigabyte for GH¢100 as well as others for businesses.
Vodafone Ghana would also be meeting some of the agitated consumers who go by the group name “Internet Users Association of Ghana” to reach a consensus on how best the conflict could be resolved.
The group is, however, calling on Vodafone Ghana to maintain the unlimited data package for GH¢70 at a speed of 2 megabits/sec and the package for GH¢180 at a speed of 12 megabits/sec instead of capping it at 15MB a month for GH¢65.
They are of the view that if Vodafone wants customers to move to higher packages, the company should rather improve the speeds to attract people to move, instead of using customers’ consumption rate to determine how much they pay.