The Nigerian Communications Commission's five-year Strategic Master Plan is expected to make Nigeria's economy Information Technology driven. But operators in the sector have argued there is need to remove barriers to telecommunications expansion, especially to the hinterland for the new strategy to be effective. ADEYEMI ADEPETUN writes.DESPITE an impressive record of over 110 million mobile subscriptions in 10 years, over 40 million people living in rural communities have not felt the impact of the phenomenal growth of Nigeria's telecoms sector. To experts, the challenge presents a core area of action before the telecommunications operators and the government.According to experts, who were gathered at the NCC forum, the telecoms revolution will be a mirage if the entire country cannot benefit from various telecommunications service being offered, especially now that the country aspires to be a major economic bloc in the African sub-region, through the Vision 20:2020.Telecoms analysts reckoned that ICT sector holds the key to the realisation of the nation's ambition to truly emerge as a dominant developing economy, adding that the application and promotion of ICT to facilitate rapid growth and national development must be institutionalised in all facets of the economy and must reach the remotest part of the country.Speaking on the need to expand telecoms frontiers in the country, the Minister of Communications Technology, Mrs. Omobola Johnson said it is imperative for government and the public to collaborate and fashion a way around its expansion.Johnson said the challenges facing emerging economies, such as ours is the ability to prepare citizens for the growing information challenges, 'I believe that an enabling ICT environment can help the country to leap frog and compete globally.'Corroborating the minister's point of view, NCC Executive Vice chairman, Dr. Eugene Juwah said communications technology has become a major enabler in the growth process of humanity, adding that today, communications has remained permanently visible, with its applicability to almost every human endeavour.According to Juwah, the five-year Strategic Master Plan (SMP) has been programmed to be able to identify areas of challenge to deeper penetration of ICT services in the country, adding that the plan will guide the regulatory body's interest and intervention activities while enabling it respond quickly to the challenges of the sector with the aim of paving the way for an ICT-driven economic development.Speaking, the Corporate Service Executive, MTN Nigeria, Mr. Akinwale Goodluck said increasing rural telephony penetration is very critical to economic growth.According to Goodluck, to have a successful rural access, the issue of poor power supply must be addressed, adding that alternative power sources are critical elements in this regards.Joining Goodluck in this call for improved power generation in the country was the president of the Association of Telecommunications Company of Nigeria (ATCON), Mr. Titi Omo-Ettu, who said if the benefits of telecommunications must be deepened in Nigeria, government must resolve the power challenges in the country.Omo-Ettu, an engineer, said power challenges has led to the collapse of many telecommunications firms in the country.According to him, in 2012, telephone operators will use 25 million litres of diesel monthly to fuel 20,000 generators located at over 15,000 cell sites in the country, which will be at a current pump price of N153 per litre of diesel. This, he said will amount to operators spending about N3.82 billion to fuel their generators monthly and N45.9 billion by December.Furthermore, Goodluck noted that addressable market size is determined base to an extent on income distribution of the population, adding that coverage tends to follow addressable market distribution, traffic flow and demand.'In Nigeria, a large proportion of the low-income population resides in rural areas, some of which are hard to reach. Cost of delivering services is higher ' limited opportunities to leverage economies of scale due to unique characteristics of rural areas', he stated.Goodluck, who also listed lack of infrastructure to support operations in rural communities such as transmission and power, as part of the challenges, had recently at another forum in Lagos said that MTN's $40 million rural telephony project had been successful and recorded the erection of about 350 base stations across the country.According to him, operators like MTN must find feasible and sustainable ways to offer communications services to low-income customers in rural areas, adding that with the right support from stakeholders and the right business, the next wave of growth in subscriber numbers should come from rural areas.He added that there was need for consideration of operating environment by ensuring staggered implementation of policies, regulatory initiatives with high impacting financial implications. 'Encouragement of industry self-regulatory initiatives and light touch regulation is also needed', he stated.Speaking on behalf of Airtel Nigeria, the Regulatory Affairs Manager, Osondu Nwokoro said there is need to improve service delivery at infrastructure level at the rural areas, stressing that over $15 billion have been invested in various rural telephony projects across the country by operators.Nwokoro said effective Public Private Partnership; infrastructure development programmes among others are required to make telecommunications services available at the hinterlands.While calling on the Federal Government to stir the challenge, the Airtel Nigeria chief also called for checks on the activities of state and local government on telecommunications firms in the country.For the Chief Executive Officer of Etisalat, Steve Evans, represented by an official in the company, Ibrahim Dikko, to expand services to the rural areas, there is need for more spectrum allocation; power must be sufficient, availability of adequate backbone infrastructure and above all, government must be interested in the process.To deploy services to the rural areas and expand ICT benefits, the lack of a national backbone infrastructure in the country is a major limitation, this was the submission of MainOne Cable Company CEO, Ms. Funke Opeke, adding that with these challenges, realisation of Vision 2020 and Millennium Development Goals may remain a tall order.'It's unfortunate that we do not have a national backbone to serve as common distribution architecture in Nigeria as it is in South Africa and Ghana. The infrastructure we have now was built by proprietary investors and it is not being shared.'For us to achieve ubiquitous broadband access, which is required for rural penetration, end- users must have the service at their doorsteps but this will not be possible without shared infrastructure.'Opeke explained that the country cannot harness ICT for economic development if the available broadband capacity brought into the country by Main One, Glo 1 and WACS is not distributed to the end- users.The Main One boss, who canvasses a regulatory intervention by the NCC, said: 'The NCC must ensure that we have a framework for access to share infrastructure. The framework should include incentives and penalties for choosing to or not to share infrastructure. The incentives should be geared towards businesses willing to share infrastructure at a cost-effective rate.'More succinctly is the shortage of Base Transceiver Stations (BTS) in the country, put at just 20,000, which expert said is very low to expand communications services across the country.Speaking on this, the President, Association of Licensed Telecommunications Operators of Nigeria, Mr. Gbenga Adebayo, recalled that the country is in dire need of about 50,000 base stations for nationwide telecoms service coverage. He, however, lamented that the industry has been unable to increase the number from the current 20,000 due to serious regulatory bottlenecks.He, therefore, called for the harmonisation of all regulatory requirements across multiple government agencies into a one-stop structure that will make base station deployment faster.'It is increasingly apparent that the protraction of administrative processes involved in successfully deploying network sites are hampering networks' ability to effectively meet their roll-out obligations in a timely manner. ALTON believes that streamlining of these procedures into a more concise, efficient format would go a long way towards attaining the best interest of all the relevant stakeholders; we therefore seize this opportunity to propose the establishment of one-stop shop permitting model. This permitting system will coordinate and harmonise the relevant government MDAs in one location for the purpose of a singular permitting point for telecoms site-build operations.'Adebayo also seeks the passage of the Critical National Infrastructure Bill for the protection of the telecoms infrastructure in the country. If Nigeria must harness ICT for economic growth, the ALTON president recommends the continuous encouragement of local and foreign investment in the telecoms industry.
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