The Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC) says it has been losing about 5 million dollars annually due to the government’s failure to honour financial obligations for the use of its masts in operating the national Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) platform.
The DTT platform, an infrastructure project designed to provide a digital transmission backbone for Ghana’s migration from analogue to digital broadcasting, relies heavily on GBC’s infrastructure.
During a visit by the Parliamentary Committee on Communication and Information, the Director General of GBC, Prof. Amin Alhassan lamented that although the state broadcaster’s masts have been critical to the project, GBC has been denied revenue from their use.
“GBC owns the masts on which the national DTT is rolled out for all TV channels to operate. We do not earn anything from it. And we think that that was a missed opportunity, and we still think that something can be done about it. The national DTT plan is sitting on the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation’s assets. And as landlords, we should be benefiting from that. We could have made between 5 to 7 million US dollars annually for charges for using our masts. We’re getting zero. It happened many years ago, and most of us were not here to even speak about it. But I have done my research and I’ve figured it out, and management has discussed it. We should have been benefiting because you can’t take assets of GBC and roll out a DTT plan for nothing, and we don’t get anything”
The Director General of GBC, Prof. Amin Alhassan, also stressed the need for adequate compensation should the government proceed with plans to utilise the Corporation’s masts for the rollout of the 5G network.
