Hitherto, jokes were made on how January seemed to be three months compressed into one. Surprisingly, January 2019 has proven us all wrong. According to millennials on social media, January 2019 is the fastest moving January in history. Whichever way you view it, twelve months come by sooner than expected. Making use of each month is where the magic of living your best life lies. Being gifted with a new year is an opportunity to do a detailed introspection, dream big, set some goals and execute them. Here at SpeakUpp, we created a poll at the beginning of the year to ask individuals if they had outlined some goals for the new year. Majority of the respondents gave a resounding YES. Setting goals for each year is great progress. However, it doesn’t stop there. If you want to realise the goals you have outlined or set new goals altogether, below are five ways to achieve that. Set Goals You Care About When you care about a goal, you go all out to make it happen. Have an internal drive for the goals you set and make sure they are feasible enough to follow through. Now, take a relook at the goals you have set for yourself. Assess if you really care about them. If you do, proceed to step two. If you don’t be honest with yourself and set new goals which you have the passion for. Break Each Goal Down By all means, have a big goal. It is not only audacious but necessary for growth. Break down each goal into small actionable chunks you can easily work on. Trying to achieve a big goal at once can leave you feeling disappointed and discouraged. Break it down. Work Towards Your Goals Daily After reducing a huge goal into multiple small chunks, work on each chunk daily. Hence, each day is very important. Set a specific time during the day to work on it. Eliminate obstacles which may prevent you from working on the goal. Do not encourage excuses. If you work on your goal every day for the next few months, you will have accumulated a lot by the end of the year. Remember, days compound into years. Measure Your Results Every month or quarter, take some time to measure your progress. How are you faring? Are you working towards the goal hard enough? Are you seeing any changes? Are there any tweaks you need to make? When you measure your work and progress, you will find out if you’re on the right path or not. You will also discover trends and hacks to make your journey even easier. Be Patient Rome was not built in a day. No great thing happens at once even seemingly overnight successes. Success with anything takes time, effort and dedication. Dedicate yourself to your goals, be patient and follow it through. You will be grateful you did. Within every human lies the ability to transform into a better person. By following these steps, you will begin to see a change in your life, gain more confidence and dare to be more. 2019 will only be a good year if you set your mind to tasks and make them a reality.

SOCIAL MEDIA GENERATION You could have started reading this after posting selfies using some dog filters on Snapchat. You also probably just found out on Instagram that that girl you didn’t really like in school just got married. There’s also a chance that you’ve just come out of an NDC — NPP fight in the comments section of a news story on Facebook with an absolute stranger. All these things would not be possible if you did not have one thing. Mobile data. GHANA"S MOBILE DATA SPACE What are Ghana’s telecommunications companies doing to make mobile data more accessible and affordable to the people? With the launch of Vodafone’s 4G LTE service, MTN moving from 4G to 4G+, AirtelTigo introducing data that never expires and the Ministry of Communications already talking about moving to the 5G spectrum, things seem to moving in the right direction. Or are they? Research conducted by cable.co.uk recently ranked Ghana at number 25 for cheapest data charges in the world at about $1.26 for 1GB of data. India was right at the top with 1GB of data costing $0.26 on average. Now before you pack up your bags to New Delhi in search of a cheaper way to watch YouTube, the research conducted showed that some data plans in Ghana could go as low as $0.34. That is great news so the next question to ask is, which of our beloved telcos is actually giving the lowest rates on the market? MOBILE DATA USER VIEWS We threw that question to the Speakupp universe and they spoke up! We asked for the company with the lowest data rates among the telcos (MTN, Vodafone, Glo and AirtelTigo) as well as the two other companies that provide 4G internet in Ghana (Surfline and Busy). One thing we learned? People are not feeling the 4G guys much. Just under 5% of respondents felt that they had the lowest rates. However, it was much better news for MTN. The poll showed that more than a third of respondents (36%) felt that MTN had the lowest data rates. This was followed by AirtelTigo with 31% of respondents saying they had the lowest. Both Vodafone and Glo each had just under 15% of people saying they had the lowest rates. DEMOGRAPHICS Diving a bit deeper into the data, we see a slight shift in the results when we consider gender of the respondents. 41% of males answered that MTN had the lowest data charges. From our analysis, Airtel/Tigo is giving MTN the market leader, a good run for the money of women. 31% of women thought Airtel/Tigo was cheapest as against 28% of women who favored MTN. Vodafone performed a bit better among females but the others have quite a bit of a way to go before convincing subscribers that they are value for money. More than 70% of the Speakupp users that responded to this question were between the ages of 20 and 30 years and among this age group, there was not a clear winner. MTN had the lowest rates according to 40% of 20–30 years old but AirtelTigo was not very far behind with 36%. That is quite a statement that more than 3 in 4 respondents in this group chose between MTN and AirtelTigo. MARKET SHARE According to Ghana’s National Communication Authority, as at the end of December 2018, MTN had a market share of almost 60% of 2G/3G mobile data subscriptions with AirtelTigo following with about 23%. Vodafone came third with 16% with the rest for Glo. MTN was even more dominant in the 4G mobile data space with almost 93% of all subscriptions with Surfline in second place with about 5%. It would be interesting to know if people are just voting for who they subscribe to or are making genuine comparisons between providers. The mobile subscription penetration is almost 90% in Ghana which suggests that a number of subscribers may have multiple phone numbers (likely across networks) and so it is definitely plausible that they are comparing networks to get the best deal. FUTURE TRENDS The competition for the minds, souls and money of the Ghanaian market will get more aggressive with the launch of Vodafone’s and MTN’s 4G + as well as Airtel’s never-ending data. With only 15% of favourable price responses, Vodafone has the highest mountain to climb and it will be interesting to see their market acquisition strategy. Overall, telcos will need to focus on transparent, simple and cheaper data bundles. This can only be good news for the Ghanaian customer regardless of age or gender.