…As ATCON formally welcomes Danbatta
…Identifies Communications tax bill, Forex, fake phones as dangerous industry threats

By Prince Osuagwu (Hi-Tech Editor)

THE telecommunications industry, at the moment, appears to be the  goose that lays the golden egg, in Nigeria. At least the ten percent the sector adds into the Gross Domestic Products, GDP is a pointer to this.

With well over 150 million subscribers, the sector continues to have a positive outlook for Nigeria in global mobile market and telecoms sector in general. This subscription growth is largely driven by several factors including operators’ promotional activities, multiple SIM ownership and the extension of network coverage to under-served areas.

Yet, there continues to be significant demand for traditional voice and data services, demands which have to a large extent remained untapped.

Besides subscription growth, the industry rakes in handsome funds that give the economy some hope of survival after the dwindling oil fortunes. For instance, the Executive Vice Chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC, Prof Umar Danbatta recently declared that his regulatory agency, raked in a whopping N47 billion naira from spectrum licensing and other usages in the last one year.

This is also as it grew Mobile broadband penetration to 20.95 per cent, and internet penetration to 47.44 percent, placing the county second in Africa just behind South Africa

For him, Value Added Service providers alone  added N30bn VAS investment to the Nigerian economy. However, rather than gloat on all these figures and statistics, the need to protect them should be of paramount importance. The sector is said to be under threat from certain operational policies and some inactivities which if not checked could deter foreign direct investment and eventually cripple the economy.

Most of the threats have been identified by industry advocacy group and the Association of Telecommunications Companies of Nigeria, ATCON, which has challenged president Buhari to take advantage of the telecommunications growth in Nigeria to bolster the country’s economy.

Meanwhile, to be able to maximise the full potentials of the industry, ATCON said certain anomalies must be addressed and corrected.

Broadband planimplementation

According to the group’s chairman, Mr Olusola Teniola, “ATCON is interested in the continuous development of the sector, but there are some issues that have constituted a threat to investment friendly and enabling environment for our members such as: national broadband plan-implementation; approval of draft national ICT policy; foreign exchange impact viz-a-viz network roll-out; proposed 9% communications tax Bill; local content within ICT sector, and dumping of counterfeit phones. We need anti-counterfeiting measures”.

He however noted that dumping of counterfeit phones is a new problem in the industry, which was why his organisation appealed to the  Government to put in place anti-counterfeiting measures such as the facilitation of integrated Web portal based IMEI-IMSI collection to stem the menace of substandard or unregistered mobile phones circulating in Nigeria with obvious consequences of poor quality of service, loss of revenue to the government, loss of business by OEMs  and loss of jobs as well as in revenue to the Nigeria mobile market.

Teniola, while formally welcoming Danbatta to the Nigerian telecom industry, also said that there were more than twenty mobile phone brands that do not have NCC type approved certificate to operate in Nigeria, adding that “these unregistered/unapproved brands have over one hundred and fifty mobile phone models circulating in Nigeria”

Responding, Professor Umar Danbatta thanked  the industry stakeholders led by ATCON for making out time to honour him and NCC for their efforts to address quantum of challenges in the sector.