We’ll consolidate our CDMA leadership with quality service, expansion - Aigbinode, Reltel Acting Chairman

Mr. Kenneth Aigbinode is the Acting Chairman, Reliance Telecommunications Limited otherwise known as ReltelWireless. For a man who made this mark in Banking and Finance, his foray into the telecoms industry and the mastery he possesses speak volumes of his ingenuity. A member of the Chartered Institute of Bankers, Aigbinode in this recent interview with Bode Adewumi outlines the company’s plans to retain its number one position in the CDMA category, among other industry issues. Excerpts:

SIR, how would you as sess the performance of the Nigerian Telecommunications Industry so far?
Well, I think fantastic is the word if you consider what obtained before the GSM licences were auctioned way back in 2001 and what we have today. We have moved from the tele-density of 0.4 around 2001 to close to about 30. I think it is a significant achievement. The industry has moved on quite admirably and I believe that we today rank as one of the fastest growing telecoms market in Africa. I see a lot more growth ahead as you can see that the industry is quite vibrant, robust, with a lot of potentials still to be actualized.

In the face of stiff competition from the GSM operators, how would you rate the performance of the CDMA operators in 2007?
I like the ring of that question in the sense that we are beginning in the CDMA segment to make the impact that had eluded us in the past few years. As you know, CDMA operators could not roam their services beyond their areas of jurisdiction.

If you had a 01 area code you could not for instance move your phone to a 084 jurisdiction and have the same phone work there. So, we had that restriction for five years. That was lifted when the NCC introduced the unified licensing and also adopted a technology neutral stance.

Since the introduction of unified licensing, which has allowed CDMA operators to roam their services across the country on one network thereby becoming fully mobile and also render services on a new range of numbers, we have since increased interest in the investment sector.

So, that is in the context of your question, I will say we are beginning to make the impact we should have made a long time ago. This is because we are looking at two dominant technologies that work everywhere else and compete with each other at par. CDMA is the dominant technology in North America and parts of Asia. GSM is the technology of choice in Europe and most of Africa, but both technologies are making in-roads into other regions where they did not currently dominate.

Accordingly, I’m quite pleased that we finally have an even playing field in Nigeria that allows us to complete at par with GSM operators. The competition has been energetic given the resources of GSM players and the advantages they enjoyed prior to the introduction of the Unified Licence by NCC in 2006.

As a follow up to that, how did Reltel fare in 2007?
In 2007, we acquired our Unified Licence, obtained our national spectrum, assigned the new number range 0702-3. We got a million of that. In other words, we have the capacity to create a million new lines under the 0702 series. We are currently pursuing an expansion of that to complement this acquisition and turn this into reality for our customers.

We have to expand our network from a lowly based of about four to five cities in 2006 to about 17 cities and towns in 2007. Now, because of the power of transmission, we are ringing in more than 50 different towns and cities that are also nearby, particularly in the Eastern part of the country. To the extent that we were the network of choice if you were in the Eastern part of Nigeria during the Xmas season. This is because we completely dominated that region.

In think that 2007 was a watershed year for us. It was also a year in which we signalled that we were back after the fire disaster of 2004 to begin to lead the CDMA segment of the telecoms sector in Nigeria. It was also the year that we had the extensive footprint of any CDMA operator in the country and we would be building on these achievements this year.

Sir, regardless of the rather disturbing quality of service by telecoms operators, the stage appears set for the entry of more operators. What do you think would be the implication of this on the industry and to the subscribers in general?
Specifically, you must be talking about one additional GSM operator that has been licensed. May be, on a net basis, an additional 3G operator that has been licensed. And then to know we have some revamped operations in the CDMA segment.

All of this portends a very aggressive competition ahead for consumers. I see a lot of benefits for subscribers generally. The more competition you have, the greater the choice in terms of service quality, tariff plank, etcetera, etcetera. The sole beneficiary of all this development will be the consumer of the services that telecoms companies render.

For us the operators, it means you have to be quality conscious, to ensure you give value for money. It means you have to be everywhere that your subscribers want you to be. In other words, coverage will matter. It means that your network has to be robust to take on additional customers as we deepen the market. The implication of that also is that we have to invest in capacity in addition to coverage. We have to be innovative to think of investment in more modern technologies etc. So I think that is a significant competition in the industry now and even more ahead. But there is nothing that gives us more joy than to have competition on a level playing field. We have the right technology (CDMA), we have the right licences, the right people and our customers have been satisfied so far. I think we have not seen anything when it comes to the potentials of Reltel to meet the demands of the subscribers as well as return value for money as we have always done.

Some foreign investors have been buying into some telecoms companies in Nigeria and I will like to know if Reltel is looking in this direction?
Let me begin by saying that it is a good development to have well-resourced foreign companies buying into the Nigerian train. You know to have foreign investors looking into your country is a positive thing and it reflects confidence in the government, in the business environment and more significantly, confidence in the regulatory environment that the NCC has created for telecoms in Nigeria.

Now regarding Reltel, we are building our own values to project this company positively. We are very proud to be one of the very few truly Nigerian companies still holding out. But I already remarked that there is nothing wrong for foreign companies buying into operations in Nigeria.

And if the right oppurtunity presents itself that will ensure that our customers get even more values from associating with us through our alliance with some foreign operators, then we would take that oppurtunity gladly. The bottom line for us is that the customer come first if the arrangement is going to result into bringing more people on the network. Further lowering the tariffs for them, giving them more value and choice, then we will go for such arrangement. As of today, we have had several knocks on the door, but we are not in a hurry to go into an alliance.

Can you briefly comment on Reltel’s expansion drive?
As I mentioned earlier, last year we were present in 17 different locations, specifically in Kaduna, Zaria and Ibadan to complement Abuja, Lagos. We also went into Aba, Owerri, Umuahia, Akwa, Enugu, Nnewi,Asaba in addition to Onitsha that already existed from time. We might be cutting over to full services in Afikpo, Abakaliki, Nsukka, Benin City, Makurdi and Jos very shortly. This expansion is, on the train has left the station with these 17 last year and we are hoping that everything being equal, we should be in 51 cities and towns by the second/third quarter of this year.

The issue of internet service is a controversial one, especially its accessibility to Nigerians. Would you say Reltel has an edge in this regard?
Let me speak for CDMA first and then Reltel. CDMA is a well-known technology for that service. It is more robust than any other commercial technology in the environment today for rendering data services. At Reltel, we had been configured to render 20 per cent data services and 80 per cent voice since our launch in 2001.

In other words, we did not require any upgrade to render internet services in Nigeria. Now, we are working on introducing even a higher upgrade of this capability which is the EVDO. And we are going for the REV-A which is the higher version than has ever been launched in this country.

With EVDO, you can get speed of up to 2 megabits per second and that is about three times faster than what the alternative technology will give you after several upgrades. I will like to be a bit specific here. For GSM, until you upgrade to GPRS and then buy phones, that are GPRS enabled, you can’t even do data service. At that, GPRS is a very slow cousin of EDGE, which you have to upgrade to again under GSM before you begin to approach the speeds that you have with CDMA 2000-1X.

Now, both technologies, with advancements, boast 3G capabilities. For CDMA, the next progression is EVDO, which doesn’t require too much investment to migrate to it. However, with GSM, its 3G technology is in the form of UMTS or HSDPA. UMTS is also a cousin of CDMA in that its basically wide CDMA or WCDMA. At the end of the day, when you talk about data capability, internet services; the native technology for this service is CDMA and that’s the technology we have chosen.

And that is why we have remain the company to beat in this area. I am not saying its not possible for others to match this, but it requires a lot more investment in the alternative technology to match the speed that we currently render. But as I said, we are not resting on our oars. We are investing further in some advanced versions of the CDMA, which is the EVDO to give our subscribers even better experiences on our network.

What are the things you regard as challenges to your smooth operations?
The challenges cut across all the companies operating here. In other words, we experience the same challenges. Power is one. As a result, must telecoms operators have to deal with that by establishing their transmission backbones. We have the issue of security, which also touches every operator in this environment. You have to pay extra to secure your base stations and installations. I think if we can have significant relief in these areas, it will make our expansion, operations easier and it will have a very big positive impact on tariffs.

In other words, it will bring tariffs down because right now, apart from being a telecoms company generating capacity for airtime usage for subscribers, we are also a transmission company and to some extent, a power company. And if you ask my preference, I want to be a telecoms service provider. So, these are the constraints.

What is going to be your major focus this year?
2008 will not be significantly different from 2007. The focus is on coverage, capacity building and quality of service. I think we are number one, at the risk of being immodest when it comes to quality of service. Which is why the commercial telephone operators have voted for us. We have also had favourable mention at different fora and our many awards over the years attest to the fact that people like our quality.

It was learnt that Reltel is introducing some new phones into the market, why are you doing this?
Yes. That’s part of the service proposals we have for our subscribers. We are known in this market for providing people with choice. We are known for bringing in the most functional phones and at the most affordable value into the market. Nobody beats us when it comes to handsets. Constantly, what we ask ourselves is what is currently inconveniencing the subscriber that we can tackle through the introduction of new phones. This is a reflection of quality of service issue that we have in the industry.

It is also a reflection of the people trying the alternative technology. Unfortunately, depending on the size of your handset, it creates a huge inconvenience for one to have to carry two, three handsets. That is why we are looking to introduce a handset that has the ability to take two different technologies. Technically, we call it the dual-tech phones. It is nothing like other phones that have been marketed. Other phones that had dual technology do not provide you the convenience of flexibility of receiving calls simultaneously on the networks on the phones. So, this is the difference that we bring. The phone that we will introduce which we will call the Reltel phone will have a provision for a Reltel SIM (I used SIM because that’s what people understand), but the technical word for our SIM is RUIM. We would be selling our RUIM which goes into that phone and you have an extra slot for your GSM SIM. That way, you can carry your CDMA SIM, around as well as the GSM SIM in one handset which we are introducing.

We are bringing in these phones at subsidised rates to create this convienence for our subscribers very quickly. So, the default CDMA network on that phone will be Reltel and then the GSM option will also be provided depending on the subscriber’s preferred GSM network. You’ll agree with me that this is an innovation and I enjoin everybody to look forward to this phone.