Fibre Cuts Cost Telcos Over $20M in 2025 – Sam George
The Minister for Communication, Digital Technology and Innovations, Hon. Samuel Nartey George, says fibre cuts remain a growing threat to service quality in Ghana’s telecommunications sector, costing the industry more than US$20 million in repairs in 2025 alone.
Speaking at the Government Accountability Series on September 7, 2026, he said the country recorded 3,900 fibre cuts in 2021, which spiked to 10,034 in 2022.
The figure dropped to 6,344 in 2023 and 5,600 in 2024, before rising again to 8,000 in 2025.
For 2026, 8,578 cuts are projected, with 4,289 cuts already recorded in the first half of the year. The average repair cost per fibre cut is US$2,045, the Minister said.
A root cause analysis of network incidents in 2026 shows that road construction and excavation account for 49 per cent of all fibre cuts, making it the leading cause.
Third-party and private developers account for 26 per cent, while other causes, including mining, utilities and vandalism, account for 25 per cent.
The Minister noted that the Government’s Big Push infrastructure programme accounts for roughly half of all road-construction-related fibre cuts each month, attributing it to a lack of approved excavation drawings and poor site coordination, which he described as a key operational gap.
He cited representative incidents including the Winneba-Mankessim route, which suffered over 17 hours of outage, degrading data experience across the middle belt; the Ho-Ziope route, which suffered over 19 hours of outage leading to loss of resilience and degraded internet nationwide; and the Hwediem-Goaso route, which suffered over 9 hours of outage, degrading Quality of Service across Bono Ahafo, North and Western North regions.
Major corridors have seen roughly 72 cuts a month on average since the start of the Big Push.
Mr George also flagged power grid instability as a compounding pressure on network resilience.
He cited four major incidents in recent months – the Akosombo Fire Incident on 23rd April 2026 which impacted nationwide grid availability with an extended recovery period; the Greater Accra Floods in Q2 2026 which caused power failures and infrastructure damage across the capital; the National Grid Outage on 29th July 2026 which caused widespread instability affecting cell site power supply; and the National Grid Outage on 20th August 2026 which further compounded downtime.
The Minister said the government is engaging relevant agencies to improve coordination between road construction, utility providers and telecom operators to protect critical fibre infrastructure and safeguard service quality.
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