Global supplier of GSM network infrastructure, Ericsson, and Millicom Ghana, operator of tiGO network have entered into a partnership deal to extend communication services to 34 villages in the Mamprusi District in the northern part of the country.
The partnership deal, which falls under Ericsson�s Millennium Village concept, will involve the provision of infrastructure facilities including 10 base stations and cabling to enable tiGO, the telecom network operator -- to extend communication services to one of the unserved areas in the country, which is inhabited by more than 30,000 people.
The country manager of Ericsson, Alan Triggs, said the initiative to extend communication services to underserved areas in the northern region ties into the company�s Networked Society initiative aimed at connecting the world through communication.
He said the Millennium Villages Project has demonstrated how ICT and broadband can be used to enhance development through projects ranging from mobile applications for decision-making support in the health sector, to the use of mobile phones for data collection and systems management, to classrooms enabled with innovative technologies.
�We believe in being the prime driver of communication in the world, and there is nothing better than the Millennium Village to bring that to life because we are providing communication services to a place where it never existed before.
�These villages that we target do not have communication services, fixed or mobile, and so we hope to bring voice and data services to them. Bridging the digital divide is one of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG), and we do this very rapidly in the village,� he said.
The Millennium Village project in the Mamprusi district is the second of such projects being undertaken by Ericsson in the country after successfully executing one at Borekusu in the Ashanti Region.
The project is expected to be completed within the next five years, after which the implementers expect the Village to be self-sustaining.
So far, the Millennium Villages are proving that by fighting poverty at the village level through community-led development, rural communities in the country can achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) of improving education, health, gender equality and environmental sustainability by 2015.
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