THERE is a negative development which popped up a forthright ago that can even be used as a yardstick to measure the growth and performance of the telecom industry. Vmobile in an audacious move is asking the courts to wind up NITEL since the level of indebtedness of the latter to other operators especially to Vmobile means that NITEL is no longer in a position to do business.
Were this action taken about seven years ago, doting NITEL subscribers would have ensured that Vmobile or its officials or both suffered physical violence or any other action that would have carried its imprints for eternity.
The reason for this is simple. NITEL was the beginning and the end of the telecom industry. It was the alpha and the omega and it had the knife and the yam firmly in its grip that it could measure out punishment to the innocent subscriber or unplug from its network a business partner that grew too ambitious. For telecoms, NITEL was the power house and since that power has turned into an ant-infested pile of papers, another operator has risen to initiate an obituary process of the former prince of technology jungle.
The lesson from the NITEL/Vmobile encounter is that even a negative development has become a useful tool to measure the growth of the country’s telecom industry. But what is this growth rate that people are excited about? The story has become a global tale of success and heroism.
Here is an industry that hardly existed. Then came a reengineering of liberalization the process which immediately led to a GSM auction that has become exemplary to the rest of the African countries. After initial hiccups encouraged by initial doubts over ability to make payments for license fee, the story has become a fairy tale of success told by the ordinary man on the street and in fact the only tangible fruits of democracy that they can see. Some have argued that these were services that were supposed to have been there, services shouldn’t be used as an electioneering campaign topic. But the reality is that the services were not there and for decades the country just laboured to make do with about 400,000 connected lines from NITEL and about three quarters of that number from the private operators to serve a country of over 120million people.
This is the story the Minister of Communications, Chief Cornelius Adebayo, went to tell in London recently. Speaking at CWC conference on the Nigerian Telecom industry, Chief Adebayo informed that there has been a sweet turning around of the industry with the number of lines hitting over six million from a paltry 400, 000 about four years ago while investment has hit a whopping $4.1million from a shameful low of about $500, 000million within the same period.
These kinds of figures give an inducing feeling that the telecom industry is in a cruising altitude at the moment. To this Engr. Ndukwe during a a chart with Hi Tech, gave an emphatic no, saying that a lot still remains to be done to solve the country’s telecom needs.
In his words: “We are not on a cruise level now. I wouldn’t say we are on a cruise level. We are doing very well by comparing with our standard before. We are doing extremely well because it is not just the mobile operators that are attracting investment to the sector, even fixed operators are attracting some investment. But billions of dollars are required in order to reach that double digit subscriber base that we are talking about.”
And this is where the current boom in the telecom industry really begins from. When the civilian government came in 1999 after a protracted turbulent period, the head of that government, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, made it quite clearly that the telecom sector would be one the areas of focus by the administration. Two reasons may have informed this; to make communications easy for Nigerians by putting telephones in their hands, and through the process attract investment into the country.
Both objectives are being met. But for this to happen the government had to reboot the NCC through the appointment of a new leader that could bring a visionary direction to the Commission. Engr. Ndukwe who was already doing very well in the private sector at the time and also providing leadership to the entire sector through the platform of ATCON became the perfect instrument in the hands of the administration. Through him the Commission was not only reinvented but indeed has repositioned itself to provide a new direction which the continent is beginning to take as working sample.
What is available in the record book since the year 2000 when Engr. Ndukwe took over as the EVC of the Commission is that there are four companies providing GSM services, two national operators, NITEL as the incumbent and Globacom as the second national operator (SNO), a number of companies providing Fixed Wireless Services and more numbers providing internet services. Nigerians have never had had it so good that they can have a choice of phones few years after they were told by the soldiers that telephone is for the rich.
In spite of this number however, Ms. Anne Bresnahan, boss of an Abuja- based telecom company, Startech, told Hi Tech in her office last week that even though the number of lines range in the neighbourhood of 6, 000,000 actual connections could knock the number to about 3million. And looking at my hands, she asked: how many phones do you carry? At the time I had two mobile phones on me and another was in Lagos, bringing the number to three. The argument was not lost on Hi Tech. Ms. Bresnahan had taken us to the field of quality which most phone users are complaining about in Nigeria.
Throughout that week phones were literally dead in Abuja and she had every reason to be cynical. Yet it is to solve problems like this that the NCC had put a lot of checks and balances in place. The Commission insists through the various actions and policies that there must be an acceptable quality threshold.
For instance nobody can start any telecom operations in the Country without a license from the NCC. Nobody can bring in any equipment including handsets without a type approval from the Commission. And just of recently it pegged an interconnection rate to encourage operators to drop rates. Also part of the response to the problem of quality although on the long run, is the establishment of the Digital Bridge Institute (DBI) which is targeted to provide expert hands to solve various puzzles that exist in the industry. The Commission has continued to hammer on the absence of skilled manpower to adequately cater for the sector.
In the whole of the continent, the DBI has begun to play a prominent role. The Consumer Parliament which brings together operators and consumers monthly under auspices of the Commission is yet another effort aimed at working on a common understanding that can impact on quality and the over-all well-being of the industry. Little wonder that the ITU has hailed it as a potent mechanism that could be adopted in different parts of the world to resolve disputes between operators and consumers.
When the meeting opens at the Meridien quality may still remain a cornerstone problem that has to be tackled head-on.
One other interesting thing is the belief of the Commission that although Nigeria has been singled out for praise for her progress in the Telecom industry, the country ought to be doing more on the driving seat. For instance, the theme of this year’s conference is: Connecting next ten Million Nigerians. What the Commission has accepted through the theme is that there remains a deficiency of telephone in telephone access in Nigeria especially in the rural areas, a problem that needs to be handled immediately. Engr. Ndukwe believes that we ought to get on with tackling the next set of problems facing the industry.
According to him: “Another important issue is that our progress has been mainly in voice communication. In the modern world, you talk about ubiquitous networks. You talk about broadband connection. Very soon, when we think we are bridging the digital divide and providing voice access to people what we would be facing would be a world that is facing a broadband divide.”
Apart from the efforts of operators to put phones in the hands of the Nigerian people, two efforts that may stand out on the side of government through the instrumentality of the Commission is the Wire Nigeria Project and the Universal Access Fund. While the Wire Nigeria project is to take backbone facilities to the length and breadth of the country, the Universal Access Fund is to provide a financial cushioning for those operators that may want to take facilities to such remote places even if the operational terrain may not be lucrative immediately.
Said Ndukwe: There is still a lot of work to be done in our country, and we need now to start on how best to facilitate it. One of such projects is our pet project called The Wire Nigeria Project. It is a concept that we say that it is important that Nigeria has a widespread of fibre optics infrastructure across the country. The network of fibre that we have today are only limited to certain roads. We like to see under the Wire Nigeria Project that every part of this country, no matter how remote is connected to a backbone infrastructure, not just by radio but by fibre optics.”
An operator told Hi Tech that the Universal Access Fund has been in the front burner for sometime, yet no action has been taken in that direction. It may be reasonable to hope that if the Commission wants to achieve the target of 10million lines, this and many other issues will be periscoped in the two day conference. Perhaps the Fund may feature in the policy statements and path of growth for the industry in the next one year, which the regulatory body will release at the forum.
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