Internet connection

I was travelling throught the country for a month and my experience whit wifi hot spot wasn´t good, not many places whit wifi, and poor conection., also need to be aware of scammers triying to reach your info, there are many I saw them in bars spending the all day there triying to scam people trought facebook and fake love messages XD, so who knows if they are able to reach your data by wifi.

What I did was:

get a SIM card in ghana is not that easy, you need to wait in a big Q and have and ID, so I did pay somebody to get one for me and I did have internet almost verywhere, good luck in your trip, you will enjoy the country.

any thing I can help just let me know.

I find it is not so easy to find places that have an internet connection when I'm in Accra. I end up using my roaming on my phone a lot. We have internet at the house in Accra but even this can be iffy at times so I end up hotspotting with my European phone

Are there any limitations? you can transfer pictures and short vids with SIM-card only? what are the costs of getting decent speed/capacity?

Thanks so much for your info 😘

Mtn has the best internet service in Ghana!! Getting a sim card might be challenging since you are a foreigner, but hit me up as soon as you are in Ghana or about to come to Ghana. I will find you one and the data you want!!

@Jowijones It's bad wherever you are typing from, you saw a few people doing some illegal stuff does not mean all the systems are compromised!! Good to hear you had a wonderful stay.

@rokaxelvaska01

Internet in Accra, depending where you live is very fast and cheap. Let Internet be lesser of your problems.

Hi! thanks bro.

when u say fast n cheap, u mean wifi in public places like cafés n such? If i go for 4g, what are the costs for a service that lets me transfer pics n vids? i need to communicate verifications of financial investments? (U live in Accra?).

grateful for any input!

Thanx in advance. Have a nice day

Mtn has a largest mobile network coverage  nationwide and their best package is around $30, which give u about 265gb and it never expires. Vodafone broadband, Mtn fibre broadband, teledata and simba all have awesome packages with stable and fast Internet. You'll have access to any of them depending on where you live in Accra.

As some forum members already wrote, you can easily buy a WiFi-router and data for it here in Ghana, provided you'll find a Ghanaian who has his/her "Ecowas Identity Card" for Ghana and is willing to register the needed SIM-card on his/her name (for me a family member who's living with us did that for us). Quality and speed are OK, but not as good as what I was used to in The Netherlands.

Tip: Buy a small mains stabilizer with built-in battery function (they don't cost much here in Ghana) and run your Wifi-router on that. In that way your WiFi-router will keep working for some time (mine continues to work for about 6 hours) during power outages (called "Lights Out" or "Dumsor" here in Ghana), which unfortunately happen frequently in Ghana (frequencies and durations differ from city/area to city/area).  Most providers (like my provider Vodafone) have their own mains back-up systems so they keep on functioning most of the times during power outages.

Some of these stabilizers also have USB and mobile charger ports. If so, they can also recharge your mobile. But you can also buy a separate "power pack" for that, which also doesn't cost much here in Ghana.

As far as I know, the connection through such a WiFi-router is safe, but I'm certainly not an expert on this (and in the end every code can be cracked anyway...). Our WiFi-router doesn't work outside a radius of about 15 meters, which makes it pretty safe anyway at the place where we are using it, since someone would have to climb over the wall around our plot to come into that radius.

Related tip: Take a battery powered torchlight with you and always keep it close.

Greetings,

Robert

@A.E.N FARMS

Thanks bro! much obliged!

my last q: what about cafés n restaurants, bars n such. They have wifi and are there many around in the city?

greets!

I know a substantial part of the hotels in Ghana do have Wifi (almost always included in the room price).

I'm not sure about cafe's and such (I never use WiFi in such places). My guess is that most small cafe's/bars do not have WiFi, but some of the better/more luxurious maybe will.

Some other members with the needed knowledge/experience will be able to answer this.

@Robert Gr. can you please give me a bit more information on the "small mains stabilizer with built-in battery function" you mention. I come to Ghana periodically and lights out is a constant challenge with no access to power, so i am interested to find out a bit more. Could you give an example of perhaps what you have and where in ghana i can try and get them, as finding out where to get things on the internet in Ghana is also challenging.

I bought a "Siel Green Point RT 3 kVA" (so it can supply 3000 Watt) because I wanted enough stabilized power to feed my music equipment. It is rather sophisticated so a bit expensive. But because I had several pieces of my music equipment go defect, I wanted to be sure my stabilizer would prevent that in the future. Since I use this stabilizer, nothing broke anymore.

I bought my stabilizer at "BNIT Ghana", located in Accra.

Like I wrote, my stabilizer has a built-in battery. So when there's lights out, the stabilizer continues to provide electricity. The number of batteries can be expanded so can be adapted to your needs.

Depending on your needs you of course could buy a stabilizer with a lower power rating. Also depending on your exact needs, the stabilizer itself could be less sophisticated than mine is. This would reduce the price.

I advise you not to buy (the much cheaper) stabilizers of the Akai brand because in my experience they are not trustworthy. Although specified to be able to take in up to 280 Vac they sometimes behave erratic at much lower input voltages. They then start to very rapidly change their output voltage between their rated 220 Vac output voltage and their input voltage at that time. That erratic behavior caused damage to some of my more sensitive audio equipment.

Since last December we have a hybrid 6 kW solar panel system with a 4.8 kWh battery installed and running at our house. We bought it from "AB Solar", who also installed it. Since then, we are much less dependent on ECG for our electricity.

Also, since last December, ECG finally fixed the problem with the high mains voltage in our neighborhood. Since then, the value of the mains voltage looks OK (it seems to stay below the maximum upper tolerance range of 10 %, so below 253 Vac).

@Robert Gr. thank you very much that is very helpful. I will look into them.

Additional:

What you are looking for is called a "UPS", which stands for "Uninterruptable Power Supply". Those come with (built-in) batteries.