Tag: NCC

THE Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), has said the process of selling 9mobile has not been concluded.

Its Executive Commissioner, Stakeholder Management, Mr Sunday Dare, told reporters on the sideline of a stakeholders forum in Lagos that the NCC had not been notified by the interim board of the fourth largest operator that a winner has emerged in the sale process being anchored by Barclays Africa, 9mobile’s transaction advisors. The forum was on cost based study for the determination of mobile voice termination rate

According to him, it meant that the process has not been completed. “The interim board of 9mobile is yet to communicate to the NCC and that’s because the process is still ongoing.  There are two regulators involved in the issue, the financial and telecoms regulator.  Unless the final process is complete, the licensing process doesn’t really kick in. The CBN and NCC are working together to see that 9mobile is saved.  We have saved jobs and saved 9mobile from crashing and we kept up other creditors that have been working with them.

“Capital Trustees and 9mobile interim board will guide this process to a logical conclusion.  Until then and until we have final evidence of the final report we will work together,”he said.

Dare blamed speculative reportage of the 9mobile issues for the sudden decline in its fortunes, adding that there was need for caution in order not to hurt the telco further. “Because of all these unconfirmed reports, subscriber base of 9mobile dropped from 21 million to 17 million.  We just need to wait for another 30-40days to have a clarify on where to go to,” he urged.

Last week, there were indications that the special purpose vehicle (SP) promoted by a former Chief Executive Officer of MTN Nigeria, Adrian Wood, Teleology Holdings has emerged as preferred bidder for 9mobile.

The SPV is a private equity firm with an investment portfolio of $11billion. It offered more than $500 million to acquire the carrier while Smile offered about $300 million.

Smile Telecoms Holdings, which  operates in Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda, Congo DR and South Africa, is the reserve bidder.

While over 10 bidders had indicated interest in acquiring the mobile network, only five were shortlisted before the number was further reduced to three.

Globacom and Helios had failed to back their technical bids with financial bids, while Airtel pulled out of the process leaving Teleology and Smile Communications in the race.

Airtel pulled out completely, complaining about “too many hidden things” in the health of the company.

Had either Globacom or Airtel taken over the company formerly known as Etisalat, they would have overtaken MTN as the biggest operator in Nigeria by the number of subscribers.

MTN has about 52 million active subscribers while Globacom and Airtel have 37 million and 36 million respective.

9mobile, formerly known as Etisalat, has over 17 million subscribers, which if added to either Globacom’s or Airtel’s,  would have been higher than what MTN currently has.

Wood, who was MTN Nigeria CEO, was credited with building a very good business model. The Australian has remained in the Nigerian business environment since November 2004 when he left MTN.

In July 2017, 9mobile was on the verge of being taken over by a consortium of banks following a N541 billion debt overhang, but for the intervention of NCC and the CBN not intervened.

Mubadala Group, the major investor from the United Arab Emirates, pulled out of Nigeria’s fourth largest mobile operator as a result of the debt owed to a consortium of 13 banks.

The sale of 9mobile has continued despite a January 12, 2018, Lagos Court ruling expected to have put the ongoing sale process on hold.

In the judgment, Justice Ibrahim Buba of Lagos Federal High Court  nullified the appointment of an interim board for Emerging Markets Telecommunications Service (EMTS), owners of 9mobile, the country’s fourth-largest telecommunications service operator in Nigeria.

The judge gave the verdict in a ruling on an application by a firm, Spectrum Wireless Communication Ltd, which claimed it invested $35 million in EMTS/Etisalat in 2009.

The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has said this year has been particularly challenging in the area of regulation.

Its Director, Public Affairs, Tony Ojobo, who spoke on the sidelines of the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations (NIPR)  Presidential Dinner in Lagos at the weekend, lamented that the challenges posed a serious drawback to the achievement of the Federal Government’s 30 per cent broadband penetration target  next year.

He said: “This year has been full of challenges. We declared 2017 as the Year of Telecoms Consumers. And the reason for that was to make sure that we put the issues that have to do with the consumers on the front burner, addressing them one after the other.

“The 2442 Do Not Disturb (DND) code was introduced because people were still complaining about unsolicited messages but, of course, the platform has been provided.

“We still receive a few complaints from people who said they have activated but still occasionally get these unsolicited messages.

“That is why we have the second level of support that we have provided, which is the 622, that is NCC’s helpline where if, for instance, you have activated your DND (2442) and you are still receiving unsolicited messages, then you can report to the NCC on 622 and, of course, we will make sure that we handle it.”

He said the year has been a mixture of the good and the bad, because the industry has also witnessed progress.

“We still have challenges and some of these challenges are challenges that we have outlined in some of our stakeholders’ fora; that we have had the challenge of deployment of base stations in the states because of the issue of internally generated revenue (IGR) of the states by a lot of governors. A lot of approvals are delayed in terms of siting base transmission stations (BTS); we have also had BTS shut downs; we also have had issues with right of way (RoW) and the reluctance of various agencies at the various levels to give approval as quickly as possible for the deployment of infrastructure,” he said.

According to him, the Executive Vice Chairman/CEO of NCC Prof Garba Dambatta had made a case for these challenges at the Governors Forum. He said the CEO made a presentation on how these challenges are contributing to poor service quality. “There is need for us to have a pervasive roll out of BTS so that  we can narrow those gaps, the black spots we have and areas we don’t have coverage so that the issue of access and even broadband penetration can target be realised. Unless we do that, we will keep having challenges to meet the Federal Government’s 30 per cent coverage by next year. But, of course, some these challenges in delays for approval of RoWs for BTS, are slowing us down. We believe that in 2018, some of these challenges, especially as the governors are beginning to apprecaite the importance of these infrastructure in their states, will fizzle out gradually,” Ojobo said.