‘Nigerians may pay more for telecoms services’

The Association of Licensed Telecommunication Operators of Nigeria has said telecoms subscribers may continue to pay more due to insecurity, vandalism and natural disasters.
It said attacks on facilities by suspected terrorists; vandalism of base stations and cables; and damage caused by flooding raised the cost of service delivery by telecoms operators.
The Chairman, ALTON, Mr. Gbenga Adebayo, who spoke to our correspondent, said the operators had yet to recover from the damage caused by the 2012 attacks on base stations in the North and the flooding recorded in many parts of the country.
He said, “Telecoms sites (base stations) are very critical. Recovery from the damage is still a problem. Some places require new towers; some need new power systems, while some require major repairs.
“With all these, subscribers are not likely to pay less. The damage has significant impact and all these add to the cost of running business.”
While he said the sector remained the most functional industry in the country, he identified shortage of power supply, bad road and insecurity as the major challenges facing the sector.
Adebayo, while reacting to a warning by the Nigerian Communications Commission that operators would be sanctioned over poor quality service by the end of January 2013, said the commission was aware of the challenges facing the operators.
The Executive Vice-Chairman, NCC, Dr. Eugene Juwah, had said the commission would carry out a Quality of Service test at the end of January on all the mobile networks in line with the key performance indicators it had developed for them.
However, the ALTON boss said, “NCC is aware of our challenges. We expect that the NCC will put into consideration the infrastructural damage before issuing sanctions. It should take into account the challenges we are facing.”
The Head, Media and Public Relations, NCC, Mr. Reuben Muoka, however argued that while some of ALTON’s claims were genuine, some might not be.
“We have the key performance indicator to monitor the activities of the operators. If any of them is found wanting, it would be sanctioned. We recognise that they have challenges; some are real and some are not. NCC is going to be hard on errant providers,” he said.
Muoka explained that the Federal Government was working on the passage of the Critical Infrastructure Bill by the National Assembly to give priority to infrastructure. “If the bill is passed, private fibre optical cables, base stations, etc, would have government protection like public infrastructure,” he added.