Chairman, House of Representatives Committee on Communications, Hon. Oyetunde Ojo, has said vandals are responsible for poor services rendered by telecommunications companies in the country.
Ojo, who represents Ekiti Central II Constituency, spoke in Erijiyan Community High School, Erijiyan in Ekiti West Local Government at the inauguration and inspection of projects initiated and executed by him in conjunction with the federal government and corporate bodies.
The projects are located across some communities comprising Ekiti West, Efon and Ijero Local Governments.
They included the Digital Awareness Programme (DAP) initiated by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC); MTN Foundation Learning Facility-200 units of MTNF branded students’ desks and benches and 20 units of MTNF branded teachers’ tables and chairs by the lawmaker; ICT project at Efon; 500KVA at Igbemo and some others.
According to the lawmaker, “DAP is the initiative of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) designed to equip youths and the literate members of the communities with internet education for improving their ICT skills to enhance their economic opportunities.
The lawmaker said the vandals whose presence is felt in all parts of the country had made the telecom masts and other support facilities their main targets, thereby creating disruptions in phone networks as witnessed lately.
He stated, “The most challenging task affecting the telecommunications companies is the insecurity in the country; that is the attack on these base stations. At the end of the day, once you have a problem with a base station in Maiduguri, the effect is felt in neighbouring states.”
According to him, only the prompt and decisive intervention of the federal government could reverse the picture and make the telecommucations companies improve on services.
In his speech at the event, the executive vice chairman of the NCC, Dr. Eugene Juwah, represented by a national commissioner on the board of the commission, Mrs. Abiodun Olujimi, explained that a total of 230 secondary schools across the country benefitted from the programme.
Telecom services provider, MTN has appealed for understanding from its customers and other key stakeholders as it continues its Network Modernization and swap-out exercise.
The company’s Corporate Services Executive, Mr. Wale Goodluck at a press briefing on Tuesday in Lagos said the various activities related to MTN’s Network Modernization are progressing steadily. but noted that it was being affected by recent flood nationwide and insecurity.
“We regret, however, that the pace of work has been considerably challenged by the spate of insecurity coupled with the unprecedented flooding being experienced in many parts of the country,” Goodluck stated.
The network optimization exercise will affect over 4,000 base stations out of over 10, 000 across the country.
According to Goodluck “the task that we are undertaking is tantamount to building a new network .We are seeking to replicate what we achieved over a six year period in nine months”.
He explained that considerable progress has been recorded with regards to the ongoing network improvement plans adding that several swap-outs have reached very advanced stages of completion.
“The entire network modernization process is a very logistic-intensive one and the problem of insecurity has seriously affected the pace of work in some parts of the country.”
In at least 13 states, Goodluck added that flooding has created additional logistic impediments such that the pace of the ongoing network modernization efforts has slowed down.
While acknowledging that MTN’s customers have been experiencing some disruption over the last few weeks, the Corporate Service Executive said as much as possible, the company would stick to its original plan of carrying out the network procedures only at night, in order to minimize disruptions to services.
MTN’s current network modernization and swap-out exercise which began in July 2012 is expected to cover the entire country and was originally expected to span a period of nine months.
Its objectives are to considerably enhance capacity on the MTN Network and improve service quality. Under the project, which is being implemented by a combined team of MTN engineers and technical partners that include Ericsson, Huawei and ZTE, key network components are being swapped with the latest upgrades in the industry. Current power systems are also being replaced with hybrid power systems which are more environment-friendly.
•Otunba Mike Adenuga•CEO MTN Nigeria, Brett Goschan
The bombing of the base stations has re-opened debate on the security of their facilities of some telecom firms in some states in the North. In this report, AKINOLA AJIBADE examines the economic implications of the disaster to operators and subscribers.
BEFORE last week’s bombings of their masts in some states in the North, it was evident that telecom firms have operational problems, such as infras-tructural gap, poor power supply, huge costs, bad network and poor security system. The bombings have compounded these problems.
Though the Ministry of Communications and Technology, Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) and operators in the nation’s Information and Technology Communication (ICT) have taken some proactive steps to address the problems, they still need to do more.
Each time concerted efforts are made to proffer solutions to salient problems in the industry, fresh ones crop up.
Amid these challenges, the unexpected happened last week. The Islamic sect, Boko Haram, bombed some base stations in some states in the North. According to reports, about 30 Transreceiver Base Stations (TBS) were destroyed in the coordinated attacks. The base stations in Bauchi, Yobe Gombe, Borno and Kano states, are owned by MTN, Airtel, Glo, Visafone, Helios Tower and HIS Nigeria.
Expectedly, the incident, did not go down well with stakeholders in the industry.
The President, Association of Licensed Telecom Operators of Nigeria(ALTON), Lanre Ajayi, told The Nation that the bombing of the base stations has devastated many stakeholders in the information and technology(IT) value chain, stating that the development is going to have serious implications on both the subscribers and the affected telecos.
He said the issue would impact negatively on the affected firms, as well as the communities that housed the base stations.
“The bombing of the base stations will have untold effects on the affected telecom service providers and the communities in particular. The host communities would be denied access to telecom services. Their businesses would be affected, implying that they would lose a lot of money. The firms are not only going to lose huge revenues, but would spend a lot of money to build new base stations in those areas,” he said.
Ajayi said it is difficult to put a figure to the 30 base stations destroyed by the Islamic sect, arguing that the cost is huge. He said base stations are of different qualities, adding that the value of a base station is determined by the type of infrastructure deployed in it. He said base stations carry different features or components, depending on what the telecom companies want to achieve.
Also, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Teldom Group, Emmanuel Ekuwem, said the destruction of the base stations comes with attendant cost implications. Ekuwem said the communities where the base stations are sited, and the telecom companies are going to record losses.
He said the bombers unknowingly, would share moral and economic losses because the development would deny them access to communicate to their loved ones and their sponsors in those areas.
“The activities of the Islamic sect would be affected because they would be having impaired access to telecom services in the states where they bombed the base stations. On the flip side are traders, market women, artisans and students, among others that would be affected by the development. No, doubt, the issue is going to have multiplier effects on business activities. For telecom operators, it would be pretty difficult for them to access data on time until the new base stations are installed.
“There are economic and physical implications to the destruction of the base stations. The economic aspect has to do with the services being rendered by the telecom companies, and the attendant benefits to business owners in the affected states. Whether the quality of the telecom services is lower or higher in those areas before the bombing took place, it is immaterial. The businesses would suffer. The physical cost has to do with the power, hardware, software and the depreciation of the naira. When the telecom companies installed the mast few years ago, the value of naira was higher than what it is today.”
Ekuwem said telecom operators spend huge sums of money to acquire software and hardware components used for transmitting data across the airwaves, on generating alternative power, among others. This, he said, translate to billions of naira in cost to the firms.
The former President of ATCON said only the contractors that supervised the construction of the base stations can provide the cost of building a base station.
A stakeholder, Gbenga Adebayo, said the extent of damage on ICT infrastructures is great to the economy, adding that the attacks will affect the flow of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) into the nation’s telecommunication sector. He said such investors would see Nigeria as unsafe for their businesses. He said the development is a major setback for stakeholders, adding that investors would begin to see the country as unstable for business activities. He said subscribers in the affected areas and nearby areas would be affected by the development because they would not be able to have access to quality services henceforth.
He said when the flow of local and foreign investment into the nation’s telecom industry is impaired, it would affect the growth of the operators, adding that some of the telecom towers destroyed were hub sites that connect to other base stations. He noted that the impact in terms of service disruption will spill over to other states in the region.
Analysts argued that the major telecom operators affected by the development would spend huge amount of money to provide new base stations. This reasoning stemmed from the fact that a new base station on the average, costs about N40 million, translating to about N1.2billion for the 30 base stations. This is aside the cost of keeping the base stations running every month. They said N673,000 would be needed to maintain a base station monthly, while N8million would be spent yearly.
This amount when multiplied by the 22,000 base stations across the country, translates to N175 billion annually for the operators.
Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Airtel Nigeria Plc, Rajan Swaroop corroborated these assertions recently in Lagos. Speaking during the firm’s stakeholders’ forum, Swaroop said a lot of money is being spent on running base stations.
He said 54 per cent of Nigerians are covered by the national grid, while 46 per cent are not. He observed that poor power supply has affected the operations of the telecom companies because they spend a lot of money in buying diesel for generators.
Of note is the fact that telecom operators are extending services to rural areas where there is little or no access to power. This implies that the telecom service providers would spend more in those areas before they can provide good services to their subscribers.
More worrisome is the lack of effective laws protecting telecom facilities from vandalisation. This has been a major problem as various stakeholders at different fora, have called for the enactment of laws that would guide and secure the facilities of the telecom operators in the country.
At a recent forum in Lagos, the ex-Vice Chairman, Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Ernest Ndukwe, lamented the lack of prerequisite laws for the protection of telecom facilities in Nigeria. The forum ended with the call on the Federal Government to declare telecoms facilities as critical national security infrastructure, pending the time necessary laws would be enacted for the protection of ICT facilities.
