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Airtel Ghana's premium services cancelled over VAS partners feud

Director of Regulatory and Corporate Affairs for WASPAG, Conrad Nyuur says  Airtel, like all other telcos, have over the years been imposing unfair revenue share arrangements on VAS players, but adds "Airtel went too far".

 

WASPAG represents over 20 top VAS providers in the country, and they include MobileContent, SMSGH, TXTGhana, Rancard and many others.

Conrad  added that Airtel is one of the telcos that keep 70% of revenue generated by services of VAS providers and give 30% to the VAS providers to share with content owners and app developers.

"That revenue share arrangement is bad enough but just this year Airtel wrote to us and said they will now keep 80% and give us 20% but we resisted and they reviewed it to 75% to 25% but we still insist it is unfair," he said.Nyuur said they therefore gave Airtel one month notice to reverse the decision and that one month ended on March 16, 2016 but they have still not heard anything from Airtel so they have suspended all their services on Airtel until they reserve the decision.

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By this action, all premium-rated and subscribed services such as all SMS-based services, caller ring back tone (CRBT), MMS or WAP content services and even some voice services have all been cancelled on Airtel.

This means Airtel customers who subscribe to those services, some of which are essential, would no longer enjoy the services until Airtel reaches a compromise with their local VAS partners.

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