The Yuletide is here again and the mobile networks are about to witness unprecedented traffic which may cause massive congestions. CHIMA AKWAJA looks at the reasons telecom operators under-perform, the challenges they face to deliver quality telecom service and what stakeholders should do to ameliorate the situation.
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The Yuletide is here again and the perennial challenge of making and receiving phone calls on mobile networks is about to manifest. At every Christmas and New Year, the mobile networks in the country are virtually jammed as millions of Nigerians send text messages and make phone calls to loved ones wishing them well during the festive period.??
Mobile services providers especially Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) operators are never at ease as the end of the year beckons. That is why the telecoms industry regulator, Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) foresaw the danger ahead and issued an ultimatum to three of the four major GSM operators to buckle up by increasing and optimising their network capacity and rollout more base transceiver stations (BTS) and mobile switches in order to improve the quality of services (QoS) from their networks.
To ameliorate the situation, the mobile phone operators are expected to optimise their networks while they add more subscribers to accommodate the huge demands voice call and data users make on the network.
Mr. Ira Palti, president and chief executive of Ceragon Network who identified why Nigerian mobile phone operators find it difficult to provide efficient quality service, said optimising the capacity of the networks is very important to allow for more traffic to flow while the current network expansion is on.
According to him, the huge increase in capacity especially the use of data through smartphones is causing headaches to operators.”There is limited spectrum available to link the cities and rural areas. We see a lot of smartphones and data on-the-go that require microwave capabilities.”
Operators need to deploy wireless fidelity (Wi-Fi) technology to complement microwave and fibre optic infrastructure to ease the heavy data traffic piled on the networks by smartphones, tables computers used in browsing the web.
Delays in Network Rollout??
Ten years ago at the advent of GSM) in Nigeria, it took mobile network operators (MNOs) who received licence from the NCC just 45 days to search, rent space or outright purchase of a piece of land to build base stations, erect towers with antennas and go live on the network.
At the beginning, land owners were begging operators to come to their streets, estates and villages. Some of them had to donate free space in their compounds so that they could have GSM network coverage in their locality. Today that which took a month and half for the operators is now taking 6 to 12 months to build and activate a single base station.
The unnecessary delays in getting Right of Ways, Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) certificates from the ministries of Works and Environment respectively and other state regulatory agencies have impacted negatively on the quality of service (QoS) offered by mobile service providers.
The NCC regulates the telecom sector but other agencies of government like the National Environmental Standards and Regulatory Enforcement Agency (NESREA), Consumer Protection Council (CPC), National Lotteries Commission, and their state counterparts also regulate one aspect or the other of operators businesses. The mobile operators also accuse government agencies of excessive demand on Rights of Way and trenching permits at all levels.?
Subscribers are worse off because of the poor service, paying with their hard earned money at the same time bearing the burden of lack of foresight and administrative ineptitude on the part of the government officials whose duties are to facilitate speedy approvals for operators to deliver on their mandate.??
Hostile Communities
Apart from government officials who hide under state edicts and red tapes to slow down telecom growth, individuals and communities need to understand that telecom infrastructure need to be protected. Airtel once suffered from the hands of a community whom it had built a borehole in an eastern state as part of its corporate social responsibility.
According to Mr. Emeka Oparah, director, Corporate Communications and Corporate Social Responsibility, Airtel Nigeria, youths in that community, in anger for lack of running water from that borehole switched off a live base transceiver station in order to draw Airtel attention to the plight of the community, thus cutting off thousands of subscribers. He said some communities demand money for sacrifices to appease their gods to ward off evil effects of base stations before the site can go live.??
Burdensome State Govts
The NCC is supposed to be the sole regulator of Nigeria’s telecommunications sector. However, in recent times, a couple of state agencies have crept in, regulating the deployment of the fibre optic cables and masts across the country while ministries of the environment at federal and state levels have as well put their search lights on the various masts dotting the landscapes in state capitals, taxing telecom operators.
According to Engr. Ernest Ndukwe, former executive vice chairman of NCC, activities of some state governments indicate that they do not quite understand the importance of ICT to human development in the modern world and the need to attract investment to their states. “They see operating companies as immediate sources of revenue rather than agents of societal emancipation and partners in progress that they should be,” he said.
In Lagos, the state government established the Lagos State Infrastructure Management and Regulatory Agency (LASIMRA), with the sole aim of making revenue from the growing telecom sector. The government had in 2004 stated that telecom masts dotting the landscape needed to be regulated as they were not contributing to the aesthetics of the city.
Telecommunications regulation is on the exclusive list of the constitution. However, some states have added it to the residual list. In Lagos, arguments both in and out of court on whether state government has power to regulate telecom masts unfortunately slowed down the rollout of towers and fibre optic cables across the state.
Engr. Gbenga Adebayo, chairman of the Association of Licenced Telecom Operators of Nigeria (ALTON) notes that most state governments agencies see and treat telecom industry as an extractive industry whereas it is not. Lamenting the excesses of some state governments who go to the extent of blocking access to network facilities and in some cases switching off equipment without minding the consequences, he called for legislations that would guarantee the security and protection of telecoms equipment as critical national infrastructure.
Abuja’s Persistent Poor Service
While a number of state governments’ see the telecom sector as a honey pot from which they can generate revenue for their states, the pathetic quality of service in Abuja according to industry experts should be blamed on the authorities there.
Mr. Osondu Nwokoro, Director, Regulatory Affairs, Airtel said since 2005, no mobile operator has built sites in Abuja, noting that a former minister of FCT bent on beautifying the city prevented operators from erecting towers. “He refused to grant permits because he said Abuja is a novel city that should not be dotted with telecom masts”
The operators who were willing to co-locate their masts in order for subscribers to have unhindered telecom access however were asked to site the base stations and masts in Karu (Nasarawa State), on the outskirts of Abuja. As at two weeks ago, the NCC who has been mediating in the crisis is yet to resolve the problem with Federal Capital Development Authority (FCDA).
Power problems
Arresting the poor quality of service (QoS) offered by mobile telecommunications service providers is a tall order. In fact, poor service is here to stay especially with the wobbling and fumbling of governments on the electricity projects over the years
For Mr. Quasim Odunmakun, regulatory affairs, MTN, telecom operators go out of their way from building core network (sites) to building transmission networks (microwave and fibre backbones) to having their own power networks. “MTN on its own has 11,000 generating sets (for 65,000 sites) ranging from 15KVA-40KVA for BTSs and 330KVA-2.2MVA working 24/7 generating output akin to a power generating company”.
He said MTN Nigeria loses a generator a day. “The unprecedented theft of whole generators, parts and diesel, damage to fibre cables resulting from road construction and maintenance, indiscriminate vandalisation of cables and other network infrastructure results in over 60 per cent of major network outages,” he said, adding that MTN records about 800 cases of vandalisation annually.
Way Out
Mr. Deepak Srivastava, chief operating officer, Airtel Nigeria whose company recently deployed 250 solar base stations to ease the energy crisis said power outage is the major reason the telecom operators are under-performing. Airtel has doubled its network capacity and is replacing ageing generators with new hybrid ones. He said there is need for understanding of the issues among the regulator, operators and host communities and other stakeholders.
Mr. Usman Bala, deputy chairman, House of Representative Committee on Communications said after leading the committee on a facility visit of the mobile operators’ installations, that they have listed the operators’ grievances and are working on a bill to criminalise the destruction of telecom infrastructure and intervening with NCC to address the problems of operators with FCDA.??
He said: “We are here to do our oversight function. If operators have problems with NCC, we are here to help them sort these out. Multiple taxations are real. NCC is trying to come up with a bill streamlining multiple taxation, we will look at it when the bill comes to us,” he said promising to make interventions between the federal, state and local government agencies taxing operators.??
On his part, the ALTON chairman, Adebayo added that unless the regulator engages the operators proactively, the telecom sector would experience the collapse of some of its players.
He called for active stakeholder engagement such as promotion of a genuine peer review mechanism between operators and the regulator to actively shape policy, legislative and regulatory frameworks.