Professor Nii Narku Quaynor, the engineer widely recognized as the pioneer of the internet in Ghana, has called for improved internet penetration as a key solution to reducing the high costs of data services in the country. His comments come amid growing public concern that Ghana is one of the most expensive countries for internet access in the subregion.
Speaking on The Point of View with Bernard Avle on Channel One TV on Monday, September 22, 2025, Prof. Quaynor emphasized that expanding access and usage is crucial for achieving economies of scale in the sector. He explained, “As service providers, it revolves around the volume of bandwidth. If users consume more bandwidth through economies of scale, I can do better.”
He acknowledged that internet service providers often cite the high costs of international connectivity as a challenge. However, he argued that investing in additional undersea cables could alleviate this issue, provided there is a larger customer base to support such investments. “If the bottleneck for internet providers is the connection to the outside world, then they should invest in more undersea cables. But they will argue that they don’t have the funds unless they have many users willing to pay for it. That problem has always existed,” he added.
Reflecting on the early days of internet services in Ghana, Prof. Quaynor recalled that providers used to charge as much as $100 per month per subscriber to cover infrastructure costs, but prices gradually decreased as more users joined the network.
“When we started the internet, we used to charge $100 a month for every subscriber, and it was because I could anticipate that if I charged 200 subscribers, I could meet the $2,000 requirement and use the rest to expand. After we did that, every time we got more users, we lowered the price,” he explained.
According to him, encouraging new users is vital for driving down costs.
“The new users here are very helpful because they do not consume much and spend less time on pages. It is the experienced users who consume the bandwidth. So you want new users to cover the experienced ones. So we need to improve internet penetration for the internet to be cheaper,” he stressed.
Source: William Narh
