Best way to implement number portability in Nigeria — Nnamani
By Emmannuel Elebeke
At the recent concluded Mobile Web West Africa conference in Lagos, Hi-Tech ran into the President/CEO of Medallion Communication limited, one the licensed Interconnect Clearing houses, Mr. Ike Nnamani, who was one of the speakers.
Ike Nnamani
Nnamani is a well known ICT expert with appreciable understanding of the Nigerian ‘ICT terrain. So after the event, we cornered him to shed light on a number of developments spotted in the industry in recent times. His responses were predictably superb
Enjoy it:
If we may ask, is Medallion in the business we’ve always known it for or has the focus changed ?
No, Medallion is still the infrastructure development company. We primarily provide services in the area of interconnectivity.
The business of Medallion involves setting up of interconnect houses where operators not only have the opportunity to interconnect with multiple operators in the location, but equally share the available telecom infrastructure, thereby reducing overhead cost.
The company was founded with the vision of bridging the digital divide.
Currently, we are providing services to over 30 operators. Our customer base includes, the GSM, CDMA, fixed line and value Added service providers. What we do is literarily ensuring seamless interconnection among different networks and making sure that subscribers receive services from operators at a cost effective and efficient manner.
The Nigerian Communication Commission, NCC, recently rolled out its plan for the year, part of it was to fully implement number portability in Nigeria. This seems in the area of your business, can NP be a success in this country?
We have been at the vanguard of pushing for the adoption of number portability, at least for the past six years. I remember articles we wrote then, and in that article I remember saying that without interconnect clearing houses, implementation of number portability is going to be very difficult in this county.
Again, we live in a country where unfortunately, the minimum subscriber has two or more phones already. The question now becomes, which one the subscriber migrate to because, already, he can always call any of those networks from the phones he has them respectively.
Therefore, number portability in my opinion is coming slightly a little late for some people that already have multiple phones.
Haven said that, we also appreciate the fact that you need to have a clear cut plan, that is actually where I still have concern, because the desire of the regulator is that by May this year, the policy will be out. I do not think we will be able to offer it within that time frame, because it takes time.
However, we requested for the implementation and I’m happy that the current NCC boss is very determined at ensuring that it happens. So it is going to be a success no doubt.
Why do you have problem with the time frame if the NCC thinks otherwise?
First the ongoing Sim card registration has to be completed. So, given challenges we faced during the registration exercise, it is likely going to drag on a little bit longer than it is currently planned.
It is not the fault of the regulator anyway, but the way it is now, it is likely going to be. After, you have completed that, to put the infrastructure, and work out the policy to make it efficient, to me, is something that could take a little bit of time beyond what is currently estimated. What we pushed for, as the interconnect operators is that this is a service by default that should be handled by interconnect operators.
The interconnect operators today are in the best position to ensure number portability happens by the fastest possible way. One of the discussions we have been having with the regulator is to basically outsource it to interconnect operators.
Why?
Because currently, there are a few of us operating. Working together would not be a problem and there is no way we wouldn’t be able to deliver on this for the industry.
We see that as the easiest way to ensure a faster implementation on the time line the regulator is planning. Outside of that, it also saves the country of giving licenses to new firms that may not be useful again after the number portability things is completed. For a new company, the process of setting up the connectivity to the operators is one that will last for several months.
Interconnect operators already have those connectivities. Now, all that is needed is to put the data base, connecting it to the bandwidth system and the bandwidth policies and you are good to go. This is why I said that with the interconnect operators, we can get closer to achieving the implentation time lines we have in mind. Outside of that, it is going to take much longer.
How will this service truly benefit an average subscriber?
It is a service that potentially offers subscribers the choice to decide which network they want to use its services at a given time, without being bogged down by their existing number. Although majority of subscribers today have multiple lines, like I said earlier, there are still lot more people that are yet to be connected in the country. To that set of people, Number Portability is a direct win.
How workable is this initiative in developed countries?
Outside the country, number portability is more prevalent with fixed lines than mobile because, what you notice most times is that when you change your location and you want to retain your number, you port it. So, even in advanced countries number portability is not as prevalent as people initially will think.
Now, how far have you gone in dialogue with the NCC to ensure that you are incorporated in the exercise?
We are seriously involved in the process. I know when the bid document came out, a number of interconnect companies expressed interest. For us at Medallion, we clearly for implementation. we believe that ab-initio, NCC should involve interconnect operators, speak with them and work out the modalities on how to implement it.
That is quite different from what is happening.
For all intent and purpose, we are in discussion with the regulator, trying pushing and making our position known.
Collocation is fast becoming the in-thing, does it have anything to add to the cost benefits of interconnectivity?
What we call collocation here, is known abroad as carrier hotel. It is now crystal clear, especially to all the operators that you can not run away from collocation.
For many years, there was a lot of issues with it. Funny enough, there was an encouragement that people should build their infrastructure, primarily to increase the infrastructural base of the country. Now, we are at the point where some of these infrastructures are there for new players and even existing ones moving into new areas of choice should consolidate on.
The benefits are enormous, from the operator side, if you share infrastructure, it becomes cheaper for you on a unit cost basis. Environmentally, the pollution is less. collocation is also beneficial to the consumers who now live under healthier environment. Again, the cost of production is cheaper, and the money cut from there can be ploughed back into expanding more locations, offering more incentive or rebate to customers. So, everybody in the chain benefits.
Anything that has advantage must have a disadvantage. Is there any, in infrastructure sharing?
The disadvantage in sharing is the theory of single point of failure. If everybody is in one location and there is an incident like fire, it affects a lot of people. That is one major disadvantage in the network. That is why it is critical to create redundancies when building an infrastructure or facility, to ensure that any incidence that occurs is tackled.
The second one is when you do not trust the service provider, his inefficiency affects the customers. This becomes a decision operators going into infrastructure sharing have to worry about. At the end, the main guiding principle should be what the operator is looking out for.
Could it be that collocation has anything to do with recent incessant network failure in Nigeria?
Ofcourse, you can’t excuse collocation from failure in networks but there are two things responsible to network failure. Congestion is one. When tariff drops, people tend to talk more than expected. The second one is when the infrastructure in place is not yet adequate enough to carry what everybody is doing. So, what we are doing now is work in progress. It is not going to be achieved in one day.
