THE Managing Director of GTS-Infotel Nigeria Ltd, Dr. Pierre-Francois Kamanou has called for the development and expansion of Nigerias mobile value added service and the audiotex market in the country. He said the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) should licence providers of the services in the telecoms market.The mobile VAS, which covers all the domains of the economic & social life and structured into the following business segments, m-Money, m-Banking, m-Marketing, m-Enterprise, m-Content, m-Infotainment, m-Government, and others, should according to Kamanou be well structured.He explained that for it growth, there should be availability of a specific type of special numbering services license granted by the Nigerian Communications Commission to telecommunications VAS Providers (Aggregators); availability of virtual numbers range (shortcodes and longcodes) granted to Telecom VAS Providers (Aggregators) by the NCC and the establishment of interconnect and revenue sharing agreements between each mobile Operator and the Aggregator related to the operation of virtual numbers for audiotex services over SMS, Voice and USSD.The GTS-Infotel boss, who explained the Audiotex, to mean a category of mobile VAS enabling end-users to access information/content via Voice, SMS or USSD bearer by originating a call to a specific shortcode (Pull mode) or by receiving a call (Push mode), noted that the success of mobile VAS in Nigeria relies mainly on the creation of an ecosystem that allows all the stakeholders involved in the mobile value chain to earn on a revenue sharing basis.The Regulatory Board in Nigeria must set up a favorable business environment for the real contribution of the mobile VAS in the ICT sector in order to achieve one of the goals of the liberalisation of the telecommunications industry, so as to encourage local investors to actively participate in the development of this specific market, he stressed.According to him, VAS providers currently faces among others the following challenges, lack of regulation by the NCC, operators payout for premium rated services are not encouraging for the majority of potential third party VAS Providers wishing to market their premium services across all mobile networks, most of mobile network operators are reluctant to provide IVR and USSD interconnectivity, very long delay or impossibility to obtain and/or activate an SMS or IVR short code at a particular end-user tariff across multiple Operators and very long delay (up to eight months sometimes) to receive our payout from a mobile network operator.Kamanou noted that the restructuring of the market should include the development of a large number of audiotex based services, accessible to all mobile subscribers in the country, at the same end-user tariff per service offered, facilitating the promotion of the service by the communication of only one virtual number/shortcode to the public by the VAS Provider and new possible source of income for the Mobile Network Operators, the VAS Providers and the NCC.He lauded the policy of liberalisation of the economy and the improvement of competitiveness, African governments have engaged, in the last ten years, with various programs of reorganisation of the telecommunications sector, stressed the importance of improving the global offer of telecommunications services, from a quantitative point of view, quality and at affordable prices, and to facilitate the access to the greatest number of the population, in order to meet the various needs of the users and population.According to him, the primary objective of GTS-Infotel Nigeria was to set up a new business value chain model at the disposal of the third parties (corporates, brands, media, organisation) in order to enable them offer end-users, innovative value-added services, accessible from the mobile phone via SMS, USSD or IVR virtual numbers at premium or normal rate tariff.To this effect, he said GTS had since May 2005 successfully applied for a Telecommunications Value Added Services licence to provide Special Numbering Services for audiotex services.
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