Two decades after the Federal Government liberalised the telecoms sector that enabled the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) issue digital telecoms services known as Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) technology, the industry has opened up the economy while its legacy challenges remain, writes LUCAS AJANAKU.
Sunday, last week marked the 20th year a GSM number was first dialed in the network of MTN Nigeria, the largest operator in the country.
Precisely, GSM was introduced into the market on August 6, 2001 after the NCC concluded a three-day auction on January 19, 2001, in Abuja that led to the issuance of Digital Mobile Licences (DMLs) to three pioneer GSM investors. That was in the third year of former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s first term.
With that singular step, telephone subscription moved from 400,000 lines to 298,553,406 mobile lines and 98.28 per cent teledensity, according to the April-June subscriber data released by the NCC.
Before the liberalisation of the industry, access to information technology was on privileges as a result of the inefficiency of the Nigerian Telecommunications Limited (NITEL) and its mobile arm, Mtel.
In terms of local and foreign direct investment (FDI), the sector has attracted about $80 billion while investments in mobile towers, VSAT turnkey networks, fibre optic infrastructure backbones, data centres, call centres, service centres by service providers has sprang up like a damned river suddenly losing its fetters.
Also, submarine landing stations for international have gone up from one to about five, with two indigenous firms, Globacom and MainOne investing heavily in this area thus revolutionising the communications landscape and making ubiquitous, voice, data, and video and internet services but at premium prices.
In line with global trend towards digitalisation and leverage the powerful infrastructure of the telecoms sector, the country has stepped up to 3G and 4G and is on the verge of deploying 5G technology.
According to Deloitte, a leading global provider of audit and assurance, consulting, financial advisory, risk advisory, tax, and related services, an examination of the nation’s rebased Gross Domestic Product (GDP) figures showed that the telecoms industry accounted for 8.69 per cent (N6.97 trillion) of the total GDP. “The bulk of this revenue is alleged to emanate mainly from voice services – a service line which has slowed down (per user) in the last decade. This means that to remain relevant it would appear that operators in this sector must focus on providing other services apart from voice,” it said.
But in spite of these gains, the sector is still bedeviled with challenges, which have remained largely unattended to, especially the lip service paid by the National Assembly to the passage into law of the Critical National Infrastructure (CNI) Bill, which would have categorised telecoms infrastructure in the group of power and others.
Chairman, Association of Licensed Telecoms Operators of Nigeria (ALTON), Gbenga Adebayo, at a public hearing organised by the Joint senate Committee on Communications; and Trade and Investments on: “The increasing rate of drop calls and other unwholesome practices by telecoms network operators in Nigeria that have robbed Nigerians of their hard-earned billions of naira” early last year, listed the challenges to include willful infrastructure vandalism, theft, delay in approving infrastructure expansion, multiple regulation/taxation and many others.
Addressing the issue of drop calls, he said the quality of service provision all over the world is influenced by the operating environment hence there is need to know ‘that our operation will be impacted one way or the other by our environment’ adding that as with every other sector of the economy, the telecommunications sector has its own peculiar challenges impact on the ability of operators to deliver seamless services to customers.
Telecommunications operators continue to suffer various forms of infrastructure damage across the country, leading to sudden outages or poor Quality of Service (QoS). Adebayo said a typical scenario is a situation where hoodlums break into a site, kill or injure the guard on duty and cart away valuable equipment such as the power generating sets, BTS equipment and air conditioners among other things. This immediately leads to network outages in the area covered by the vandalised facility. In addition to this, neighbouring BTS sites will then come under excess pressure as they are made to bear more call and data traffic due to the outage on the looted site. Besides vandalism, he said other causes of infrastructure damage include natural disasters such as floods. Road construction across the country also leads to indiscriminate cutting of fiber cables laid beside the roads. This also impacts QoS, leading to drop calls among others. Damages to telecommunications infrastructure cost millions to restore thereby eroding resources that could have been deployed to network expansion and maintenance.
He said at the peak of the insurgency in Northeast, operators were also at the receiving end of the destruction that took place in the region. In Adamawa, Borno and Yobe states hundreds of BTS sites were either bombed or affected due to dependence on a bombed site. This has resulted in loss of coverage in places such as Dikwa, Gamboru, Monguno, Bama, Konduga and Damaturu. Operators have been able to restore a lot of these sites, while others are still pending due to security concerns.
“In some cases those that were restored have been bombed again. Efforts are currently ongoing with security agencies and state governments to secure sites for restoration. With these efforts it is hoped that there will be noticeable improvement in coverage, leading to reduced dropped calls in the affected areas,” he said.
Another major cause of drop calls and poor QoS in general is the illegal shutting down of telecommunications facilities by state governments and local government or their agents on the one hand and landlords/communities over disputed taxes, levies or rent as may be applicable. Operators sometimes get into disputes with states and local governments over taxes and levies or with landlords over rent. These often arise when the government’s agencies attempt to impose illegal taxes and levies in a bid to raise their Internally Generated Revenue (IGR). Disputes with landlords on the other hand could arise when the terms of the contract are not being respected by the landlord or when multiple individuals lay claim to a piece of land where a BTS site has been constructed. In all these typical cases, rather than resort to a court of competent jurisdiction to resolve the dispute in accordance with the law, state/local governments and land lords tend to resort to shutting down telecommunications facilities in a bid to force Operators into submission. The result has always been the unpleasant drop in QoS with drop calls being one of the main indicators.
Adebayo said another major cause of poor QoS, particularly in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) is the failure of the Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCDA) and its subsidiary agencies to grant the statutory approvals required by operators to build more sites. As the existing infrastructure get to full capacity, operators need to build more facilities to accommodate excess call, SMS, data and USSD traffic. “Unfortunately, in the past seven years, the FCT Administration has not granted approvals for telecommunications sites to be built. They continued to argue that the BTS facilities are in breach of the city’s masterplan. All efforts to get the authorities to invoke the process of reviewing the masterplan to accommodate emerging needs and technology such as mobile telecommunications that were not in place decades ago when the masterplan was conceived have not yielded positive results,” he said.
Another cause of poor QoS in major cities such as Lagos and Abuja is that most large buildings in the country today were built without adequate consideration for deployment of ICT infrastructure especially for mobile telecommunications services. Best practice in resolving these issues remain deploying mobile telecommunications coverage solutions in existing large buildings.
Adebayo lamented the proliferation of signal boosters and repeaters in the country.
According to him, there has been serious proliferation and deployment of unlicensed wireless repeaters/boosters in many market locations and residential premises across Nigeria which has now become a major bane to GSM network QoS.
“Mobile Repeaters are wireless devices which are used in practice to enhance GSM mobile coverage by amplifying and re-transmitting mobile signals to improve coverage in areas where it is poor. Using this repeater in an ad-hoc way often causes interference to other users thus leading to high call drop, particularly if the repeaters are operating outside the direct control of the mobile operator. In major markets in Nigeria such as ASPAMDA in Lagos, Main Markets Onitsha, mobile operators network have observed significant degradation and call drop as a result of uncontrolled and un-licensed installation of wireless repeaters and booster. Following the observation, NCC was promptly notified and immediately began campaign and market wide awareness against the continuous usage of these illegal boosters. Network providers were also encouraged to increase their coverage footprint in these markets,” he said.
Unstable power supply/prolonged power outage, he said has caused damage to hardware. By far, this is one of the legacy problems in the industry dating back from the time of Nitel.
“One of the key issues operators face is power instability resulting in damage to active equipment. The instability leads to loss of communication and invariably poor customer experience. In some cases, they result in massive fire outbreak in the telecommunications infrastructure/ facilities. Late last year, an Operator lost its Makurdi BSC to a fire outbreak which affected some areas in Benue and Cross River states. The operator responded swiftly to restore service via alternate routes to nearest nodes within a reasonable time frame.
“Prolonged outage and long mean time to repair (MTTR): Site outages are expected due to the nature of machines – active and passive equipment components may fail, requiring replacements. Operators optimal spare parts management systems provide required material at proximity to the sites which should make restoration quicker,” he said.
Another legacy challenge in the sector is the preponderance of substandard mobile devices. The NCC has consistently insisted on only type-approval for mobile devices in the country.
Adebayo said there is a significant number of handsets in the market which are not compliant with the 3GPP standards. “These products are uncertified and are often limited in performance even in perfect network conditions. The impact of these rogue devices does not only impact user experience, it can also degrade network performance. This is in contrast with the objectives of both the NCC and MNOs to provide quality service to mobile subscribers,” he said.
ALTON believes that a number of measures can be taken to address the challenges faced by the MNOs in order to improve QoS in general and drop calls in particular. These measures include the following: Designation of telecommunications infrastructure as Critical National Information Infrastructure (CNII). Section 3 (1) of the Cybercrime Act 2015 provides that The President may, on the recommendation of the National Security Adviser (NSA), designate any telecommunications or Information and Communication Technology (ICT) infrastructure as Critical National Information Infrastructure (CNII) to be specially protected by Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs). Where these infrastructures are vandalised, damaged or illegally shut down, the culprits shall be punishable under the relevant offences.
“It is therefore very important that telecommunications infrastructure be so designated as CNI or CNII as provided in the Act. ALTON is happy to inform this distinguished joint committee that the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Dr. Ibrahim Pantami has taken the bold step to initiate a draft Executive Order which is currently being reviewed by the National Security Adviser (NSA) before being sent to the President for assent. We believe that once this declaration is made via an executive order and relevant stakeholders are sensitised, the issue of illegal closure of facilities will reduce significantly, if it does not stop completely.
“FCDA should grant statutory permits for site roll-out. The FCDA should be prevailed upon by this distinguished Senate to resume the grant of relevant statutory approvals for the construction of BTS sites within the FCT. This will ensure that operators build more sites to accommodate the excess traffic that existing facilities have been struggling to cope with. If this is achieved, there will be less congestion in the networks and blinds spots will be effectively covered to improve QoS.
“Governments and landlords should respect the rule of law: While an Executive Order on CNII will provide a strong legal ground to discourage illegal site lock-outs by state & local governments, communities and landlords, it is also important for those stakeholders to respect the Executive Order. Aggrieved parties must resort to either engagements, negotiations or the court of law to resolve disputes regarding taxes, levies, rent and lease,” he had submitted.
These challenges notwithstanding, experts are of the view that the future remained rosy. They argue that robust, predictable regulation and implementation of policies that encourage a level playing ground for all investors will drive the country into a full blown digital economy.
The Executive Vice Chairman of NCC, Prof. Umar Danbatta agrees no less. Speaking while welcoming the new Permanent Secretary of the Federal Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy, Festus Yusuf Daudu, said the effective regulatory regime put in place by the leadership of the Commission has resulted in increased deployment of infrastructure by MNOs, which has helped to improve broadband penetration and other related service delivery in the country.
Currently, third generation (3G) and fourth generation (4G) BTS deployment has increased from 30,000 to 53,460 while fibre optic transmission cables expanded from 47,000km to 54,725km all within five years, resulting in improved broadband/telecoms service delivery to Nigerians. This figure, though a significant improvement, it is a far cry from the about 80,000 BTS required for effective coverage of the country.
Danbatta said the licensed Infrastructure Companies (InfraCos) are expected to add 38,296km to optic fibre cables when they commence fully operations. On harmonisation of Right of Way (RoW) Charges, the engagement of the minister of communications and digital economy with the Nigerian Governors Forum (NGF) has led to the adoption of a maximum of N145/m RoW fees in Kaduna, Katsina, Imo, Ekiti, Kwara and Plateau states.
The high RoW charges across different states of the federation have negatively impacted the required expansion and rollout of fiber optic across the country. Harmonisation of RoW charges will increase investment and expansion of critical transmission infrastructure.
Similarly, when the CNI Bill is passed into law, it will classify telecommunications infrastructure across the country as critical national assets, improve security around them while the of road construction with fibre optic ducts pre-laid as the Lagos example typifies will also reduce incidence of vandalism and theft.
