The Gambia Telecommunication Company (GAMTEL) as from Friday 7 July 2017 took over the control and management of the international gateway from MGI. This means that all international call termination fees which used to be collected by MGI will now be collected by GAMTEL.
The announcement of the takeover is contained in a press release issued by the Ministry of Information and Communication Infrastructure and it indicated that the Gambia government has terminated the contract between it and MGI or Multimedia Gateway International which allowed them to collect such fees.
“Following the preliminary report of the ICT Taskforce recently instituted by His Excellency The President, Cabinet has decided to terminate the contract between the Government of The Gambia and MGI, to exclusively manage the International Gateway of the Gambia,” the release of 10 July 2017 stated.
“GAMTEL did a successful takeover and now all international calls to and from the Gambia are through the GAMTEL gateway,” the release added.
The release also announced the reduction in the international call termination rate by $0.10 cents, equivalent to 18°/o reduction. The released also promised that “Government will continue to work with GAMTEL and operators to further reduce the cost of communication.”
The release however did not explain what went wrong that motivated Government to terminate the contract.
