The Ministry of Communications, Digital Technology and Innovations has assured that plans are underway to ensure telecommunication companies reduce data costs in the coming weeks.
Speaking to JoyNews on the sidelines at the grand finale of the ‘Tekyrema Pa Hackathon’ in Accra, sector Minister Sam Nartey George reaffirmed his commitment to tackling what he described as the “mess” of high data charges inherited from the previous administration.
Mr. George outlined key variables to be considered to deliver meaningful relief to Ghanaians burdened by expensive internet services stressing that the International Telecoms Union is assessing the industry to proffer solutions on data value.
“As we speak currently, the ITU, the International Telecoms Union, has sent a team to Ghana to also do independent assessment. And so the ITU is doing its own baseline study, but I believe that we should see in the very, very short, in a matter of weeks, less than, less than a month, we should see some movement on value.
The next key variable to tackle is the movement on price and quality according to the minister.
“And then in a few subsequent weeks, we’ll make another move on price. And then subsequent to that, we’ll make a move on quality. So, I mean, when we talk value, if today you were getting, say 100 gig for a certain price, value would mean that you could get more than 100 gig at the same price.
Price would mean that instead of paying that price for 100 gig, that price drops. So there are various tools at the disposal of the ministry, but we need to make sure that as we implement these tools, for me, the principal consideration is the patient”.
The sector minister further emphasized that the ‘Tekyrema Pa Hackathon’ is designed to train AI engineers, aligning with the broader goal of producing one million coders under President Mahama’s digital reset agenda.
“So as part of the 1 million coders, we’re training AI engineers for example and part of the reason why we’re training AI engineers is because we want to do reconfiguration of existing AI tools using large language models. Now this speaks to my heart and speaks to what President Mahama’s vision is because ‘Tekyerema Pa Hackathon’ is literally building language models that we can use to help speech impaired people but not just speech impaired people, even our farmers.
The AI tools goes beyond assisting individuals with speech disability but also helps in aiding communication between local producers such as farmers.
“There are AI tools today that will assist the farmer improve their yield or be able to determine without an agronomist present what they should do to an alien crop.
However those tools are in English and if the farmer was a soybean farmer for example a soybean female farmer in the north who doesn’t speak English speaks Dagbani but cannot read and write Dagbani, it’s important that you have a voice activated plug-in to that solution that can then speak to her local nuance as a Dagbani soy farmer and that’s the difference between her being able to give the right chemical solution to her soybean for it to survive and for her to be able to pay her kids fees or for her not to get that service and the soybean will get infected and she will lose her entire crop for the planting season”, he stressed.
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