In spite of government’s best efforts, digital access gaps in the country remain high with several communities either unserved or underserved. LUCAS AJANAKU writes on the potential impact of NCC’s national roaming service.
THE Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) last week granted approval for Mobile Telecommunication Network (MTN) Nigeria and the Emerging Markets Telecommunication Service Limited (EMTS), trading as 9Mobile in Nigeria to do trial of National Roaming Service (NRS).
With this approval EMTS and MTN are expected to configure their networks to begin test and simulation for customer experience. The trial approval covers a few local governments, designated as the National Roaming geographic area, in Ondo State.
NRS enables a mobile subscriber to automatically make and receive voice calls, send and receive data, or access other services when travelling outside a particular network geographical area by utilising the network coverage of other networks with roaming arrangements to access service.
Executive Vice Chairman (EVC) of NCC, Prof. Umar Garba Danbatta, said the primary objective of the NRS trial is to encourage network resource sharing among operators.
He said this will lead to operational expenditure (OPEX) optimisation and capital expenditure (CAPEX) efficiencies leading to freeing up of resources to expand mobile network coverage to unserved and underserved communities across the country, which will lead to improved Quality of Service (QoS) delivery to subscribers.
“The successful implementation of the trial will enable EMTS subscribers to access MTN network service within the National Roaming trial geographical area without the need for an MTN Subscriber Identification Module (SIM) card,” Danbatta had said.
Post-trial
There will be a thorough evaluation and assessment of how the trial between the two operators ran and necessary regulatory measures put in place to ensure a full-blown rollout of NRS among operator in the country.
Director, Technical Standards and Network Integrity at NCC, Engr. Bako Wakil, said implementing NRS would open extra revenue source for MNOs with less investment costs since infrastructure sharing also entails cost sharing among operators.
NRS will also promote efficient use of resources, allow easy market entry, offer better services with less negative environmental impact and promote universal service provision.
Over the years, the telecoms industry has grown tremendously. As of September, 2020, the sector’s Q2 contribution to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) stood at 14.30 per cent which translates to N2.272 trillion.
While Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) stands at over $70 billion, broadband penetration stands at 45.43 per cent as of September, 2020; active internet subscription has reached 43.7 million; active voice subscription has increased to 205.25 million while teledensity stands at 107.53 per cent
The milestones notwithstanding, there’s need for more investment to reduce access gaps from 217 to 114 currently, especially in the rural and semi-urban areas of the country. This deficit is due to a lot of industry challenges, which has been slowing down accelerated infrastructure deployment by the operators. These include poor power situation in the country that compel operators deploy their own generators to power their base stations, RoW issue, vandalism, theft of telecoms equipment at sites, multiple taxation and regulation, among others.
The industry only has around 50,000 base stations to support the entire population of over 200 million Nigerians. Only 37,000 of the base stations are 4G-enabled BTS. Whereas, industry pundits have said 80,000 BTS would be needed for effective and seamless telecommunications services in the country. Also, with respect to fibre connectivity, while the Fed Govt is current targeting 120,000km of fibre optics across the country, slightly over 50,000km have been laid by various operators and institutions to bridge access gaps and support service delivery.
NRS
Over the years, the commission has been in the forefront of encouraging innovations that would contribute to the growth and overall development of the telecommunications industry.
From the development of regulatory frameworks for collocation/passive infrastructure sharing, mobile number portability, leveraging television white spaces (TVWS) for ensuring affordable broadband services to rural, under-served and unserved areas of the country, to its most recent move to allow for spectrum trading and most recently, the ideal of NRS, the Commission has ensured that the country adopts international best practices in the telecommunications space.
In 2016, the Commission came up with a Consultation Paper on National Mobile Roaming, where it explained its plans to implement a national mobile roaming strategy that will help operators in the country strengthen their operations. The national mobile roaming is the ability of a cellular customer to automatically make and receive voice calls, send and receive data, or access other services, including data services, when travelling outside the coverage area of the home network, by means of using a visited network.
According to Danbatta, NRS is a feature in several communication licences but it has not yet been utilised in the country. He said even though it was technically possible to provide facility for domestic roaming, appropriate legal and regulatory framework have to be in place in order to encourage as well as assist the operators in realising roaming arrangement between them without any uncertainty.
The Commission, in the consultation paper, therefore, requested concerned stakeholders, experts and any interested party to send their comments/suggestions or inputs either in electronic format or in written form on the various issues raised in the consultation paper within two weeks from the date of publication.
The Commission noted the need to ensure that the policies, rules and regulation to be adopted regarding national roaming are formulated in detailed discussion with the operators as they are the main entities responsible for the successful implementation of the domestic roaming facility. Hence, the comments and inputs provided by the stakeholders have been incorporated into the efforts by the Commission in formulating a regulatory instrument on NRS.
In furtherance of its commitment towards ensuring the continued growth and development of the industry and ensuring implementation of the scheme, the commission in 2017 inaugurated an Industry Working Committee (IWC) to work out the procedure and modalities for implementing National Roaming and Active Infrastructure Sharing.
Subsequently, and in line with participatory model of industry regulation, the commission has also held a number of various stakeholders where industry stakeholders had had the privilege to make their contributions freely and raise issues that will assist the commission in instituting an all-encompassing framework that will continually contribute to the development of the industry.
One of the prominent of such stakeholders engagements was the Stakeholders’ Forum on National Roaming and active Infrastructure Sharing held on Wednesday, April 25, 2018 at the Lagos campus of the Digital Bridge Institute.
Speaking at that forum, the EVC of NCC said National Roaming has the potential of promoting seamless communication of subscribers as they will be able to roam on the network of other service providers where their own service provider is unavailable or has limited network coverage. The benefits of encouraging active infrastructure sharing can also not be over emphasised. Not only will there be noticeable reduction in network deployment costs, the industry will also witness acceleration in the take-up of broadband services and gradual elimination of the rural-urban digital divide.
