(Ecofin Agency) - Last week, Ivan G. Brown, the Director-General of the Liberia Telecommunications Authority (LTA), signed the country's Act of Accession to the Memorandum of Understanding on Basic Principles for the Implementation of Free-Roaming as part of the ECOWAS Roaming Reduction Initiative. This was in Conakry, at the premises of the Post and Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (Arpt) of Guinea, which currently coordinates the free-roaming initiative in the region.

Liberia became the ninth member of the project initiated in January 2016, joining Senegal, Mali, Benin, Sierra Leone, Côte d'Ivoire, Guinea, Burkina Faso, and Togo. The project came into force on March 31, 2017.

“The first objective of this Free-Roaming program is to reduce the cost of roaming service between our countries, and also in the long term to keep African traffic within the continent. This is really possible and that’s why Guinea believes in it. Today Liberia joins us to make nine countries out of fifteen that represent a population of one hundred million people [...] I hope we will launch the program in Liberia within the next two months,” said Cherif Antigou, the director-general of Arpt.

Free-Roaming offers nationals of the nine ECOWAS countries that have already signed it, the opportunity to benefit from free access for the first 300 minutes of communication, but also to make calls at the local rate of the country visited, for 30 days.