Subscribers must dump unsatisfactory operators - Ndukwe, NCC boss

Engr. NdukweLast week, Engr. Ernest Ndukwe, Executive Vice Chairman/CEO, Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), was the guest of the Nigerian Union of Journalists (NUJ), Lagos Council. During the question and answer session, he counselled Nigerians to migrate from an unsatisfactory network, saying subscribers’ migration was the language that an operator understands. He spoke on other related matters in the telecoms industry. OLUWASEUN AYANTOKUN was there and he reports.

IT was thought that the launch of Sat1 would help facilitate the rapid growth of the telecoms industry and better quality of service. What would you say happened?
Let me start by saying that the launch of Sat I was maybe over-hyped, because Nigeria had always before then used satellite services. NITEL had four satellite base stations in this country: one in Lanlate (Oyo State), Enugu, Gujama (Kaduna), and one other. The mobile operators in the country also used satellite services when they started. At that time, there was no transmission infrastructure, and it was difficult to reach certain locations and they used satellite to get those places. But the truth is that satellite has its own implications.

For instance, the transponders cost is very high. It’s very expensive. Also, it has limited capacity compared to what optical fibre infrastructure can give you. So, right from 2001, when the mobile operators started, they’ve always employed satellite where they were not able to reach by microwave transmission or by optic fibre one. Let me say the launch of Nigeria ’s Sat I is a welcome development in the country’s satellite business.

First, we made name that we’ve launched a communication satellite in the space. Two, that we have a satellite that we can call our own, though it has footprints all around the West Africa region and some Central African countries. The point now is actually selling the capacities in those satellites to operating companies to use to ease some of their transmission requirements for those locations where they’ve not been able to reach.

But to say that it would solve all the problems relating to transmission in the telecoms industry, I think, it is an over-bloated expectation, because there are so many other things that actually contributed to network’s reliability. You have transmission, radio base stations, etc. Even if a satellite gives you all you need for transmission, you need base stations. You can look at a base station as providing the cable to your house, using radio.

Other things follow before you can have the service. So, its relevance, if you ask me, to some of this our mobile operators is giving transmission where other means can’t get them. But I know, MTN already has over 3,500km of optic fibre cable; Glo has over 2,800; NITEL has about the some length, though many of them are not working now because of the deterioration in NITEL. At any rate, if you ask any engineer which he prefers, he would say give me fibre because of the capacity that it can carry and the durability.

In the aviation sector, we have NCAA (Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority) which deals with any operator that is not giving service according to the rules and regulations, but NCC seems not to be doing enough in the telecoms industry. What would you say about this?
What the NCC can do is to establish a good regulatory environment to provide operators with what is required to operate. Let me say that my statement might have been misunderstood, but I’m not trying to absolve any operator of any shortcoming in terms of responsibility, but I think the statement I made is still valid. When I missed a flight today, if it is the British Airways that cancelled their flight, most people would not think of blaming any regulator.

If you subscribe to an operator’s service and you are dissatisfied with its services, you have the choice of abandoning its service for another one you feel can satisfy you. For example, in the heyday of Mtel, they had about 1 million subscribers. When their services started deteriorating, many subscribers abandoned their SIM cards for MTN, Glo and Celtel. So, migrate and dump their lines. That is the language that operators understand. By your action, you’re telling them you are not happy with the services they are giving you.

It is not that the quality of service even in most developed countries I have been to are 100 percent good, but what we are complaining about in Nigeria is that the rate of drop calls and other inadequate services are too frequent and too much, and something has to be done about it. I must admit there is an unacceptable level of quality of service but the NCC has been doing everything within its limit of the law to better the situation.

I think you people must have heard that we gave directive to certain companies lately to pay compensation to subscribers? Instead of complying with that, the operators decided to go to court. On the 9th day of January, the case was thrown out, we won. They appealed, and we are still waiting. So, within the ambit of the law, we are working.

However, I’ll be quick to say that the biggest language that an operator understands is for the people to abandoned its network and go to another network. When you have the mass movement of customers from a network to another, the management of that company queries what could make subscribers leave them for another network. But if you still stick to the network, they won’t understand. That’s what we are saying, and that is what I’d encourage all of us here to do. My counsel is that we should shop right. Make sure that you don’t stay too long with any operator that is not giving you optimal service. Use the advantage of a liberalized environment to do that. When this happens, the story will change.

Is optic fibre the solution to these problems?
It is a major part of the solution. That is why many of the companies are going towards that direction. MTN started with microwave network transmission. They suddenly found out that it could not carry the traffic sufficiently. They have also tried satellite link to many of their base stations, they’ve also found out that it couldn’t do enough.They now embarked on a nation-wide optic fibre infrastructure installation. Glo is doing the same. Recently, Celtel has joined them.

So, what we have now is a country with criss-crossing of the fibres. I said that this is all the kind of thing we’d needed when the country only had about 10 million subscribers. I still stand by that statement. That’s what is happening in other countries of the world. Telkom South Africa does that by investing an average of $1 billion annually on network expansion. They provide all the operating companies with optic fibre links, linking their base stations even within villages. Unfortunately, here in Nigeria, we are not that lucky to have a good incumbent operator. Rather than improving, it (NITEL) started going down. I just wonder what would have happened in Nigeria, if NCC had not authorized other companies to start doing long distance transmission.

What do we expect in the future, considering a superb quality of service?
I can tell you for sure that, latest by two years from now, Nigerians will see optic fibre, criss-crossing the whole of the country and this means a great level of quality of service. That includes many other programmes that are now on-going.