By Adekunle Adekoya

Telecoms firms, especially mobile phone operators (both CDMA and GSM) had, in my opinion, a hard time last year. I particularly pity the CDMA operators who lost market share the way a dead fowl being dressed for consumption loses its feathers in hot water.

Somehow, telecoms services consumers here made up their minds to go the GSM way, and completely ignored the economics of their decision. This is despite the fact that in other climes the CDMA sub-sector of the mobile industry seem to be more robust than GSM. Well, that is Nigeria for you; understanding the peculiar economics of this great nation will take more than a dozen pack of World Bank economists to unravel.

The year witnessed some serious quality of service issues which resulted in the industry regulator slamming fines on the major GSM operators. We’ll have to wait and see what this year will yield in terms of QoS.

It is worth reminding ourselves that many of the issues that aggregated to give the negative tone to QoS have remained unsolved. As last year raced to a close, less than 72 hours to Christmas, a dawn raid saw attacks on facilities of two major telcos — Airtel and MTN in Kano. Given the spate of insecurity in the country, especially in the northern part, there are no signs that we have seen the last of such attacks on telcos.

Be that as it may, last year also witnessed actions from state and local governments that, put together, a picture of deliberate threat against the telcos is inescapable. Local and state government agencies filed several demand notices under one law or the other against the telcos. While the telcos battled that under a united front, the Lagos State Government came up with the Urban Furniture Regulatory Unit (UFRU), which made its own demands on the firms. By November, UFRU was demanding a whopping N3 million per base station in the state, up from N40,000 earlier.

What is baffling is the permutations behind a hike from N40,000 to N3 million. It seems as if cash-strapped governments, of which I am sure Lagos State is not one, are hell bent on funding their budgets from taxes and levies on telcos only! What makes the Lagos initiative dangerous to the telcos is that as the touted centre of excellence in Nigeria, such initiatives will be copied by other states in no time.

It will only have the effect of passing on costs to the consumer —  the average Nigerian —  who is already overburdened by paying through the nostrils for electricity that is not supplied, roads that remain unmotorable, petrol that remains scarce, schools that are ill-equipped with underpaid teachers, and poor governance by elected officials with the fattest pay packages in the world. As a result, there already is talk of price segmentation in the telecoms market.

If the telcos are to pay N3 million per base station, will the government be able to secure them? Will “area boys”stop demanding money each time a tanker goes to fuel a base station? Will there be cheaper power to power the base stations? If we know the answers to these questions, won’t the telcos be obliged to slam a differential tariff on calls originating from Lagos? Will this then be fair to all? I am sure there are a lot of Rotary Club members who will be affected by these questions. Put simply, can the actions of the Lagos State Government towards telcos pass the Four-Way Test?