‘Nigeria Needs Three More Years For
 Adequate Fixed Service Infrastructure’  
By Jonah Iboma
 8th JAN 2007

Operators have complained about inadequate infrastructure development in the telecom industry. Do you think we are addressing the issue adequately?

I believe a lot is being done in that regard. Number one, you will recall that in the last two, three years we have a number of operators laying national backbone and those backbone infrastructures are being commissioned, which will reduce the cost of long distance transmission that has been a major challenge.

Number two: the fact that the cost of mobile services today is high is also traceable to non-availability and inadequate infrastructure. I am saying that once the transmission infrastructure problem is solved, one will be able to increase the penetration of fixed service and secondly, one will be able to reduce the high cost of mobile service.

Nonetheless, I do not think that there would be encouragement to reduce the use of mobile service because Nigerians, by nature, are very mobile. But what may happen is that if we have enough terrestrial infrastructures, if we have enough point-to-point infrastructures within the cities and between the cities, we will have more of Internet services; more of data communication services and see more Nigerians relying more on mobile services only when they are really mobile.

Today, it has become a first means of contact. If a man is in the office you are trying to reach him by mobile. If he is in his car, you are trying to reach him by mobile. If he is in the house, you are trying to reach him by mobile. When that infrastructure is in place, what will happen is that people, while at work, will use fixed line, they will use Internet services. People while on the move will use mobile services and when they are home, in the evenings they will return to fixed line. But again, all of these have to do with the provision of adequate wired line infrastructure. It is coming slowly but it is coming right now. We require a period of two, three years before we can have adequate coverage of wired line infrastructure, particularly in terms of transmission backbone. But until then, I see people rely more on mobile than on fixed services.

What do you think should be done with the problem of some dormant operators holding viable frequencies?

Frequency resources are limited not only in Nigeria, but all over the world. The problem that we have in this country is that prior to the full deregulation of the industry, you have a number of people who had frequencies and today they are still sitting on those frequencies. At the early stages of the deregulation you have organisations who obtained high resource frequencies and they have not put them to use till date. Now, the challenge for the regulator is to recall those frequencies that have not been operated, then re-assign them to operators who are willing to use them, otherwise, it can charge high premium on any operator who is sitting on a frequency that is not being used today. I do not see how they can manufacture or make new frequencies. First, they must reexamine the existing approval and so they can recall those frequencies that have not been put to best use. For example, if you have a wireless operator who is sitting on a frequency that can be used for GSM, if that operator does not need it, take it back and give him appropriate frequency for his type of service if it has to be wireless. If you have a local operator who is sitting on a frequency that is suitable for 3G for example, there is no reason to continue to allow him with a promise that he will upgrade to 3G sometime in the future. Take it back from him, give it to somebody who needs to upgrade to 3G today and when he is ready for 3G, find what is available and give to him. I have also been told that even agencies like the Nigerian Railway Corporation and Power Holding Company of Nigeria are sitting on certain frequencies that are commercially viable and that can be used for certain telecom networks. If these are not required frequencies for their kind of network, recall them and put them to telecom commercial use and give them the frequencies that can be adapted to their own services. I do not see why the Railways should be sitting on frequencies anyway. I am saying today that they can recall these frequencies that are not being put to maximum use today and those operators who are not using those frequencies; they should recall them and re-assign them. This is the only way out.

Given the present scenario, how would assess the overall performance of the telecom sector generally?

The performance of the sector has been appreciable. It has been noteworthy and has been acclaimed as one of the fastest growing across the world, in particular in the African region. And if I look at our humble beginning five years back, where we had less than one million subscriber lines and today, five years down the road, we are talking about 30 million subscriber lines. I think by all standards, that is a commendable effort by all the stakeholders. I am also glad to note not only had we had appreciable growth in subscriber network, we have also had introduction of several value added service niches. Telecom has become the first means of contact with an increasing number of Nigerians, which no doubt suggests that today, telecom is becoming a way of life for many Nigerians. Summarily, I am saying that the growth and performance of the sector is commendable and appreciable within the last five years.

The mobile operators now have more than 26m line but we have just 1.5m in the fixed lines segment. Why is this so?

We must understand what the circumstances that have informed the rapid growth of mobile networks against that of fixed networks are. We are challenged by dearth of infrastructure, we are challenged by the non-availability of services over the years. And so, the turn-around time in terms of network rollout of mobile service, when you compare it with fixed, one would say is one fixed to one hundred mobile subscriber lines. That is, each could be the average. The reason being that you set up a base station, you connect them by microwave, all by wireless infrastructure. You require less time to set it up than when you are doing terrestrial infrastructure and you have to pay for the Right of Way, you have to do road crossing, you have to do bridge crossing, you have to do underground infrastructure and all that. And in a country where there is no existing information about existing underground infrastructure, you are destroying electrical lines, you are destroying water lines, you are destroying sometimes, gas lines and all that. And this, of course is a challenge to fixed line operators. Nonetheless, I do not see a short cut around it, the mobile will continue to grow astronomically when compared with the fixed line networks because of the challenges required to deploy fixed line infrastructure. But it is not to say that a fixed infrastructure will go out of existence. Certainly not, the need for fixed infrastructure will continue to be there. The need for terrestrial infrastructure will continue to be there, but if you but if you compare them in terms of growth, certainly, the mobile will continue to have more rapid growth than the fixed.

The FCT has been demolishing base stations of operators lately. What is amiss?

The current situation is that ALTON has taken the case to the public court. We have asked for government intervention and we are happy that in the last 10 days, the demolition of base station sites seems to have stopped or seems to have been discontinued by the Federal Capital Territory Authority. What really happened was that FCTA came and said they want to harmonise telecommunications infrastructure in Abuja.

They went and commissioned a private company to install what is called a co-location infrastructure and what that means is that this private company will build base stations facilities and operators will be asked to decommission existing base stations and migrate to those new base stations. Look, in principle that issue of co-sharing is excellent the idea is beautiful. No operator likes to build massive cell site infrastructure. If you can take away that out from your capital expenditure and operating expenditures, you save a lot of money at the end of the day.

But we are saying this is a city where we have existing infrastructures. You have three towers standing next to each other for three operators, you are not asking any of those operators to sit among themselves and find use for one or two of the existing towers. Now, you are building a fourth one, which we think is wrong. We are saying even if that will be, at what cost, is it free of charge? May be it is free of charge it may be worth considering but it is not free of charge.

The idea of co-location that is being championed by NCC, when we check the cost elements of what of what is applicable between operators, what those guys are asking for is something you cannot factor into any business plan. And again, they are asking operators to come and sign a long term lease agreement. That is that you enter into a co-location.

Source: Punch

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