Subscribers groan as operators fight over interconnect issues

Subscribers of Global System for Mobile communications (GSM) services are lamenting over their inability to make seamless call over different network as a result of interconnectivity issues.

Mr. Kayode Adeyemi, one of the subscribers expressed his frustration, saying: “I’m a subscriber of three of the GSM operators, each time I try to make across the network calls; it becomes difficulty now compared to what it used to be. What I hear is ‘the number you are calling is not available at the moment’ but if I call with the same network line it will go through. This situation is becoming worrisome; it seems we are going back to the 2011 era when big operators used interconnection as a weapon to frustrate small operators”.

Ike Nnamani, chief executive officer, Medallion, said that interconnectivity has remained a big issue in the country’s telecommunications industry because of none compliance of operators to Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) directive on the percentage of traffic that should pass through the clearing houses.

“NCC stipulated that operators should channel 10 percent of their traffic through clearing houses, but today they are doing less than five percent which is below 50 percent of the stipulated figure. This is one of the reasons for the situation subscribers are facing in making across the network calls.

“More so, absence of ‘Settlement scheme’ in the industry is also responsible which is being worked on by the NCC. This is the fallout of continuous use of peer to peer traffic model; Ghana borrowed the idea of clearing house from Nigeria.

Today, Ghanaian parliament has passed a law making it illegal for any operator operating in their country to pass traffic directly between operators without going through a clearing house. These operators frustrating clearing house operation in Nigeria are also operating in Ghana and have complied with the law, but same cannot be said in Nigeria,” he added.

President, Association of Telecommunications Companies of Nigeria (ATCON) Engr.Olusola Teniola  said that the ideal setup for any voice network is to have multiple alternative interconnect points that are able to carry sufficient traffic during peak hour periods. It appears that some direct peering trunks at interconnection are either heavily congested due to the amount of voice and data traffic utilizing the network or that the least busy network is able to find free available interconnect links to those networks that are facing congestion along their peer-to-peer connections.

“The physical links depict the infrastructure that has been invested in by each operator and depending on the reach and size of their customer base, traffic engineering needs to be optimally provisioned and configured to allow for sudden increases in sharp demand in certain regions.

“The nature of traffic routing around the country also has a bearing on the quality experienced by a consumer at different times. If a truly redundant backbone network had been in place for the MNOs to use then the issue of interconnection problems would not exist within the limits of call capacity,” he said.