MTN Ghana has been directed by the country’s National Communications Authority (NCA) to disconnect customers who have not fully completed the subscriber registration process.

According to an announcement released by the telco, customers who have completed stage 1 (linkage) of the registration process but not stage 2 (biometric capture), will be barred from the network as from 1 December 2022.

This follows a directive handed to MTN by the NCA on 28 November 2022 and published on the Ghana Stock Exchange.

In August ITWeb Africa reported that according to MTN Ghana’s interim results for the six-month period ended 30 June 2022, the company increased its mobile subscribers by 11.6% to 27.8 million, its active data subscribers increased by 15.1% to 13.1 million, as well as active Mobile Money (MoMo) users increased by 11.0% to 11.7 million.

In July, the Ministry of Communication and Digitalisation extended the deadline for SIM card re-registration using the Ghana National ID card to 30 September 2022.

The company stated: “MTN has committed additional resources and adopted various strategies including deployment of field teams into remote locations, self-service registration, announcements on customers’ phones during call initiation, SMS notifications, to name a few, to accelerate re-registration and ensure a speedy completion of the exercise.”

In its latest announcement regarding the NCA directive, MTN said together with Scancom PLC, it will provide a further update on 2 December 2022 “on completion of the customer de-activation exercise and will communicate customers impacted, pro forma revenue impact and initiatives to re-register impacted customers.”