By Prince Osuagwu

Perennial poor quality of telecom services has drawn the telecom operators, the regulatory agency, Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC and the subscribers closer to seek ways of getting out of the wood.

They met at a  two-day workshop organised for Information and Communication technology journalists by the Nigerian Communications Commission in Abuja recently.

Meanwhile, stakeholders were allowed to highlight their problems and probably suggest ways of making the problems lighter. Speaking at the forum, the President of the Association of Licensed Telecoms Operators of Nigeria, Mr. Gbenga Adebayo noted that, “While the nose bleeds, the eyes should still be clear enough to look at the causes of the decline in quality of services,” which is not the design of the operators.

According to Adebayo, despite the brilliant regulation provided by the NCC, challenges in the sector remain enormous, ranging from insecurity of telecoms infrastructures, a phenomenon that manifested prominently in the last year terror attack on telecoms infrastructures in some parts of the country.

It was gathered that no fewer than 30 base stations were bombed in the last year terror attack on telecoms facilities. However, the facilities are yet to be rebuilt because of lack of access. Other environment challenges facing telecoms operators include vandalism and stealing of telecom facilities, especially those located in remote areas.

Corroborating him, the Corporate Services Executive, MTN Nigeria, Mr. Wale Goodluck  disclosed that, like other telecoms firms, MTN records a minimum of 70 cases of vandalism of its infrastructure scattered across the country on a monthly basis.

Adebayo had also highlighted problems of multiple taxation, multiple regulations and right-of- way problem, saying that more than ever before, every tier of government – state and local councils see telecoms as money spinner and impose all kind of fees and in some cases about N3 million per base station, ostensibly to boost their Internally generated Revenue (IGR).

In fact Adebayo contended that “the imposition process is often fraught with litigations and argumentations which slow down network expansion roll out a service upgrade”

Another monster against improved quality of service which was highlighted at the meeting was that of multiple regulations. Apart from the NCC, ALTON also said that a number of organisations like the National Environmental Standards Regulatory Enforcement Agency (NESREA) were imposing their laws on the sector. Adebayo said that NESREA’s laws of environmental impact analysis (EIA) and safety is at variance with that of the regulator and the international community.

He said of the Agency: “On their own, they decommission base stations. Some councils are also decommissioning base stations for which according to them, the operators don’t have certificate of occupancy. While some hardly respond to request for permit to build base stations,” Adebayo lamented. The problem of right-of-way was also raised and discovered as making it very expensive for operators to deploy fibre optic cables within the cities and rural areas.

Meanwhile representative of the subscribers association at the event noted that as subscribers there was every right to complain about the poor quality of service but however cautioned that there was also need to realise that adequate security was not provided for the facilities of the operators by the government.