Four mobile telephony companies have been contracted by the Electoral Commission (EC) of Ghana to electronically transmit (e-transmit) the results of the 2016 general elections to the national collation centre in Accra.
The four are Vodafone, MTN Ghana, TiGo and Airtel.
The country has been divided into four zones, with of the telephony company assigned to one zone to operate from.
There are 275 constituencies in the country. The 57 constituencies in the Northern, Upper East and Upper West Regions are clustered into one zone while that of the 76 constituencies in the Ashanti and Brong Ahafo Regions have also in one zone.
Volta and Eastern Regions are also in another zone with their 59 constituencies while Greater Accra, Western and Central Regions with 83 constituencies are also in one zone.
The telcos are to set up a Virtual Private Network (VPN) infrastructure to link the 275 constituency collation centers to the national collation centre in Accra.
The national collation centre is where the presidential results from all the 29,000 polling stations across the country will be tallied and winner declared.
The offices of the EC from district level through to regional to national headquarters, Kasapafonline.com understands, have their own internal communications network (WAN), consisting of VSAT nodes, which is provided by the STL, an Israeli padlock coy that has diversified its operations and now supplying election related materials to the EC of Ghana.
The Daily Statesman Friday reported that the tender document for this e-transmission contract made it absolutely clear that the VPN service provider should operate “independent from the EC WAN.”
STL, the paper added, was categorical that it wanted nothing to do with results transmission.
The padlock coy’s mandate is to supply the Biometric Verification Devices used for voter verification on Election Day.
The e-transmission is such that the Returning Officer at the national collation centre should be able to retrieve a two megabytes file in less than a second.
All the 276 CPES are expected to be installed and operational by the end of November for training of technicians to take place.
The VPN, the Daily Statesman further reported, is expected to be commissioned three days before the election date (December 7) after internal stress tests have been done by end of November.
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