- AT Ghana Must Fix Audited Accounts and Governance Gaps Before New Spectrum – Sam George
The swearing-in of a new Board of Directors for PPL Net Ghana Limited, the company behind the AT Ghana brand, marks a potentially decisive stage in the government’s attempt to rebuild one of the country’s strategically important telecommunications assets.
But the immediate challenge confronting the board is more fundamental than subscriber growth, marketing or network expansion. AT Ghana cannot unlock additional spectrum already contemplated by government until PPL Net resolves outstanding corporate-governance and regulatory obligations, including overdue audited financial statements.
Communications Minister Sam George made that condition explicit during the board’s inauguration, warning that the National Communications Authority cannot legally assign spectrum to an entity that has failed to satisfy basic statutory requirements. “The NCA cannot issue spectrum to a company or an entity that has not submitted audited accounts. These are base requirements that if you gloss over today, tomorrow can become questions on the grounds of the spectrum,” he said.
The issue is commercially significant because spectrum is not simply another regulatory approval for a mobile operator. It is a scarce productive asset that determines how much traffic a network can carry, the quality and speed of mobile broadband it can offer and, ultimately, how effectively it can compete for customers in an increasingly data-intensive telecommunications market.
Government appears willing to provide PPL Net with strategic support. Mr George disclosed that Cabinet had approved making spectrum available to the company and that his ministry subsequently issued a policy directive to the NCA covering three spectrum bands, but implementation remains conditional on compliance with the law.
“I issued a policy directive to the NCA to make spectrum available in, I think, three different bands to PPL, but contingent on meeting the legal requirement,” the minister said. Almost two months after that directive, however, the allocation had not been executed because the company lacked a functioning board capable of addressing the outstanding requirements.
That places the new directors at the centre of the turnaround effort. Their first responsibility is not to announce an ambitious expansion plan but to restore the institutional credibility required before government policy support can translate into commercially useful assets.
Mr George said PPL Net’s audited accounts were about a year in arrears, alongside unresolved issues involving the company’s directors and registrations at the Registrar of Companies. The board must therefore regularise the financial statements and corporate records before the next phase of AT Ghana’s restructuring can proceed.
For a telecommunications company seeking spectrum, capital and eventual investment, audited accounts are more than an administrative requirement. They allow regulators, potential investors, lenders and government to understand the company’s assets, liabilities, financial performance and funding requirements, making financial transparency an essential foundation for any credible restructuring.
PPL Net was established in November 2024 to take over the assets and staff of AT Ghana, with the objective of preserving jobs and creating a platform capable of attracting investment. It now operates in a market where larger competitors possess significantly greater scale, meaning survival alone cannot be the measure of success.
The commercial challenge is to create a telecommunications business capable of generating sufficient revenue and cash flow to finance continuing investment in spectrum, fibre, transmission infrastructure, towers, technology and customer service. Telecommunications is intensely capital-intensive, and government ownership cannot remove the need for disciplined investment and operational efficiency.
PPL Net has sought to distinguish its future around domestic management and ownership. In its presentation, “A New Board. A New Chapter”, the company described its ambition as creating “for the first time, a telecom platform in Ghana that is fully Ghanaian-managed and Ghanaian-run, top to bottom”.
That local-ownership narrative gives AT Ghana political and strategic significance, but it cannot substitute for commercial performance. A nationally controlled telecommunications platform will ultimately be judged by network availability, service quality, subscriber retention, innovation, revenue growth and whether it can finance expansion without becoming permanently dependent on government support.
The company’s chief executive has framed the challenge in similarly ambitious terms. “This is an opportunity for us to demonstrate what an all-Ghanaian telecommunications network can truly do. For too long, there has been a belief that a network has to be enormous to be efficient. We intend to challenge that thinking,” the CEO said.
Additional spectrum could materially improve the network’s competitive position. With consumer demand shifting increasingly towards mobile broadband, video, fintech and other data-heavy services, additional capacity could help AT Ghana improve network performance and create a stronger proposition for customers.
But spectrum by itself will not turn the company around. PPL Net will need enough capital to deploy the frequencies effectively, optimise the network and invest in the supporting infrastructure necessary to convert regulatory access into improved customer experience and commercial returns.
The same conditionality applies to other government support. Mr George said he had issued a policy directive concerning access by PPL Net to the GIFEIC core, but implementation also depends on the company resolving the corporate and legal deficiencies currently before its new board.
“Apart from the audited accounts, there were issues about directors of the entity as well that needed to be addressed, and all of those needed to be addressed by the board,” he said. The message is clear: government can facilitate assets and policy support, but it cannot legitimately bypass statutory requirements to accelerate the turnaround.
PPL Net is also looking beyond conventional voice and broadband services. The company has outlined ambitions around local-language artificial intelligence, mobile money and fintech services, potentially giving the network a more differentiated identity within Ghana’s digital economy.
Local-language AI could offer a distinctive proposition if it improves access to digital services for consumers who interact more comfortably in Ghanaian languages. But such innovation will have limited commercial value if basic network reliability, coverage and customer service remain weak.
The new board is chaired by Hilary Denise Arko-Dadzie, with Eric Yaw Nsarkoh, Dr Faith Setor Quashigah, Lawrence Attipoe, Gabriel Opoku-Asare, Leo Skarlatos and Paul Osei among its members. They inherit a business with political backing and potential strategic assets but also unfinished governance work and the larger challenge of establishing a sustainable commercial model.
Mr George described the board’s inauguration as the “last trigger” required to set several outstanding policy decisions in motion. “It’s been almost two months since the ministry issued a policy directive but it’s not been actioned because there’s no board,” he said.
That places considerable responsibility on the directors. Their earliest measure of success should be completing the audited accounts, correcting corporate records and satisfying the NCA’s regulatory conditions quickly enough to unlock the spectrum and infrastructure access required for the next stage of the turnaround.
Only after that will the harder commercial questions become unavoidable: whether AT Ghana can regain meaningful market relevance, attract private capital and technology partners, improve network quality and convert national ownership into an advantage rather than a continuing fiscal obligation.
The government has created a potential pathway for the company to compete again. But spectrum, infrastructure access and political support will create value only if they are matched by governance discipline, investment and credible execution.
AT Ghana’s revival is therefore becoming a test of more than telecommunications policy. It will test whether Ghana can take a strategically important state-controlled asset, repair its governance foundations and operate it with enough commercial discipline to compete in one of the country’s most demanding technology markets.
