Telecoms giant MTN has been banned from selling new SIM cards in Ghana. The ban was handed down early this week by the National Communications Authority (NCA) in a directive handed down to Scancom Limited, owners of MTN Ghana.

A report by Ghana News Agency says the ban followed the “recent spate of service disruptions on MTN network” which made the industry regulator to engage Scancom “on several occasions on issues of quality of service, and degradation being experienced by consumers of mobile services.” The NCA listed the observed problems to include network unavailability, call dropping, call set-up and denial of service.

“In spite of these engagements, network performance on MTN continued to deteriorate,” the NCA said in a statement, adding: “Consequently, the NCA directed Scancom Limited to, with immediate effect, cease selling and/or adding new SIM cards/subscribers to its network until further notice.”

News Express reports that MTN has more than 11 million subscribers in the West African nation.