FOLLOWING last week's sanction slammed on them by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) for failure to improve their services and meet the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) set as benchmark for telecommunications operators in the country, the duo of MTN Nigeria and Emerging Markets Telecommunications Services 'Etisalat, which were fined N360 million each, have listed challenges hindering their operations in the country.MTN's Corporate Services Executive, Akinwale Goodluck, who said the company remained committed to ensuring the best quality of service for its teeming customers, adding that the telecommunications firm will continue to employ the greatest effort to overcome the infrastructural and environmental challenges that impede the delivery of consistent quality service.While reiterating the challenges that exist in Nigeria, including those related to unavailability of regular power supply, the insecurity of property, vandalisation, and the menace of multiple taxation and over-regulation, Goodluck revealed that the company generates up to 80 per cent of its power requirements, stating that MTN's network is one of the largest in the world running almost entirely on self generated power. He further revealed that the company expends billions of naira yearly on diesel alone.Goodluck also lamented the indiscriminate vandalisation of telecommunication infrastructure around the country. He estimated that MTN suffers more than 70 cuts to its fibre on a monthly basis. Indeed, in April this year, MTN had cause to publish full page announcements in the newspapers, alerting the public to the growing incidence of criminal damage to MTN's infrastructure in various parts of the country and the impact on quality of service in the country, particularly the South East, as well as Port Harcourt, Onitsha, Lagos, Kano and Abuja.He commented that the heightened insecurity in several parts of the country has limited MTN's ability to carry out routine maintenance and emergency repairs.Goodluck also recalled several incidents of multiple taxation and over-regulation, citing as examples the difficulties encountered by MTN in Abia State last year and last week's face off between NESREA and NCC over jurisdiction to intervene in specific regulatory issues, leading to the closure of a number of MTN sites in Abuja. In each case, as with numerous such incidents all over the country, MTN's ability to service its customers has been severely impaired.In a passionate appeal for understanding, Goodluck solicited the co-operation and support of the NCC to assist the industry to overcome the various challenges that he listed. He added that, 'no business thrives when its customers complain. It is not in our interest for them to do so. It is our desire that our customers are happy with us or else we do not have a business'.Whilst reinstating MTN's commitment to improve its services and apologising to its customers, he noted that the company would invest more than N158 billion in 2012 alone in its network infrastructure. 'No company has invested more than MTN in network infrastructure since 2001. We have not been shy to invest heavily in our business and we will continue to do so.'Joining his counterpart at MTN, CEO of Etisalat, Steve Evans said the company in its over three years of rendering telecommunications services in the country has invested over $2 billion in building and expanding its network and will not relent in this regard in order to meet the communications need of its customers.Evans explained that since its commercial launch in October 2008, the telecommunications outfit has been recognised as being the number one quality operator as proven by the various measures conducted and published by the regulator during the last three years.He said, 'This year alone we are investing more than half a billion dollars in expansion of our network capabilities and capacity and this expansion, which is currently in progress will reflect positively on the quality of our network'.
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