By Prince Osuagwu,  who was in Cape Town , South Africa

With virtually no other Nigerian operator at the recent concluded AfricaCom conference and Exhibition in Cape Town South Africa, the multitude of participants who may have attended the expo to learn one or two things from Nigeria on how to lead a market even from the backwaters, had to rely on the country’s fifth largest operator, Etisalat Nigeria .

Evans

Interestingly, the company’s Chief Executive Officer, Mr Steven Evans who delivered a lecture at the show, didn’t disappoint. At least the deafening ovation he received at the end of the presentation, said so.

Evans’ lecture was apt, straight to the point and was laced with colourful and original maps, charts and graphs that made a lot of sense.
In a presentation titled “Investing in New Markets and Infrastructure & growing your business as a new entrant” Evans quickly ran through the green and lush business environment that Nigeria presents, summarising that it accounts to why even when there were no backbone infrastructure, the early entrants like MTN, Zain and Globacom didn’t hesitate to build independent backbone infrastructure which the late entrants like Etisalat relied upon at inception.

He also announced that the favourable business climate that Nigeria provided, rubbed off on his network and in just two years, it has crossed the six million subscriber mark.

To that extent Evans noted that the company’s investors therefore had earmarked a whopping $2 billion to pump into the Nigerian telecommunications market to strengthen it network operation and services.

He revealed that the target of his company was to achieve seven million subscriber base by the end of 2010, adding that the proposed $2 billion investment would complement the investments the company has made within its two years of operation.

The investments he confessed, saw it build over 2000 cell sites in Nigeria , deploy services in all the 36 states of the federation and covering 55 per cent of Nigeria ’s population.

However, he decried the lack of existing national backbone network in Nigeria , saying that the heavy investments operators made in building their own backbone was responsible for the high tarrif subscribers witnessed in Nigeria for a long time.

He told the gathering that the telecommunication market in Nigeria was still a dynamic one that was only heading to a mature stage. He predicted that the voice services which has sustained the market would drop in the next two years even though the void would be filled by broadband services.

He however noted that having extensive broadband services in Nigeria was very important and added that the GSM service providers were expected to lead the way in the deployment of broadband services in the country.

Among the challenges Evans dropped for the participants to expect from the market was that of developing capacity in radio access and national transmission and advised that this is why judicious allocation and use of the 2.5Ghz spectrum would play a major role.

According to him, even as outsourcing is becoming a major practices in developed markets like Europe and India, it would be suicidal if Nigeria plunges into it not that it was not mature enough for that. “there are actually not many experienced companies that can provide quality outsourcing services in Nigeria today.

For instance if a company wants to run a customer service, it may want it to be of high quality but it may not be easy to run competitive customer service where you don’t have multiple companies that can offer that service at attractive prizes. However, it does not remove from the fact that Nigeria is a fantastic market”