By Emmanuel Elebeke

It was revealed last week that Nigerian telecom subscribers put together are unknowingly losing about N1bn on daily basis to call drops due to poor telecommunications services in the country.

However, the loss also has a tripod effect, touching both the economy and the telecom operators as well.
The Nigerian economy in this instance is said to be losing a whopping N730 billion on annual basis while the operators also bear a net loss of about N1bn.

These statistics were released last week, by a Lagos based back-end services provider, Back-Up Networks Limited, at an industry event in Lagos. Speaking on the economic losses associated with poor telecoms services, CEO of the company Mr Monday Ogbe, argued that everybody suffers as a result of poor QoS including the consumer, the service providers and the economy as a whole.

Analyzing a typical loss to these tripod sections, Ogbe said that both the consumer, the service provider and the economy experience   an average bad 10 minute call as a result of bad quality of service per day.

So in his analysis, “for 100 million subscribers experiencing 10 minutes of poor QoS at N10 average failure rate, the net loss to subscribers is N1 billion per day.

“Also, providers’ inability to service 100 million subscribers with potential 20 minutes calls due to consistent 10 minutes downtime equals N2 billion. But with less than N1 billion earned as a result of poor quality repeat calls, the net loss to service provider equals N1 billion.

As a result, the Nigerian economy losses N2 billion per day as a result of net losses from the consumers and the operators income, bringing the total losses in a year to the economy within 365 days to an estimated N730 billion as a result of   poor QoS/QoE.”

However, Ogbe noted that to address the problem of QoS for the users of over 121 million active phone lines in the country, Back-Up Networks has come up with web-based solution, christened idonporto.com portal, which arms customers to test by themselves which network is performing well and view result online.

The portal, according to Ogbe, provides empirical data that operator can also use to correct the problem, saying if an operator fails to monitor the portal to make necessary correction, there is tendency for it to lose subscribers, who will be willing to port to another network.

Ogbe added that customer service experience is presented on the site so the customer can make informed decisions as to who to subscribe to. Service providers can use the report to improve on their performance.

“With idonporto.com, telecoms subscribers can ensure mobile device is compliant and fault free, report service degradation promptly, inform operators if there are planned events that might require extra capacity provisioning to avoid future service degradation.

“Also, personalized test software from.idonporto.com can be used to test the network and report findings to the service provider and allows subscriber to port to a more reliable provider based on empirical data provided by the portal on a service provider.”

“The portal also allows the operators to ensure regular coverage monitoring and improvement walk testing exercise hard to reach locations both in building and outside; ensure continues end to end customer experience testing and monitoring; ensure constant contact with customer on tips to improve customer experience,” he said.

He added that idonporto.com is a vital resource centre for comparison with operator internally generated testing data. The data provided by the portal also include performance rating for Internet Service Providers.