MTN Ghana has been fined US$1.8-million by the country's telecoms regulator, the National Communications Authority (NCA), over poor quality of service.

The NCA also fined AirtelTigo, Vodafone and Glo and accused all four operators of failing to honour QoS commitments leading to dropped calls and poor sound quality.

In local currency AirtelTigo was ordered to pay GHS11.6 million, MTN GHS9.1 million, Vodafone GHS8.9 million and Glo GHS4.5 million.

A statement released by the NCA reads: "These punitive measures are intended to encourage the mobile network operators to adhere to the quality of service parameters as set out in their license conditions, which will, in turn, result in an improved service experience for the consumer."

The latest fine originated in Q1 of 2018 when NCA carried out QoS monitoring in the Greater Accra, Eastern, Western and Northern regions, including two districts in the Ashanti region.

With all operators failing to meet QoS standards governing coverage, data, voice and speech quality, they were given three months to rectify the situation. However, the operators did not meet the KPI thresholds.

In response, MTN Ghana Chief Executive Officer Selorm Adadevoh said prior to the sanction, the operator held discussions with the regulator that ought to have been considered.

"We don't believe that discussions have advance enough before the fine was imposed," said Adadevoh. "Hopefully we'll have a meeting in the next few days, maybe weeks to try to understand a little bit better some of the detail behind the actual fine, the value and what goes into it and from there we could have much more concrete position on what this mean for the business."

Meanwhile the operator has announced the appointment of Thomas Motlepa as its new Chief Technical Officer.

Motlepa is responsible for network management and overseeing the company's tech vision and related strategies.

Prior to joining MTN, Motlepa previously held positions at Ericsson SA, Telkom SA and the SABC.