Telecom operators get respite on forex

By Adedeji Adeyemi Fakorede

The Nigerian communication commission (NCC) is worried over the degenerating Quality of Service (QoS) provided by Mobile Network
Operators (MNOs) and other service providers in the country and has
declared a state of emergency on the Quality of Service.

The Executive Vice Chairman (EVC) of the commission, Prof. Umar
Danbatta told the operators that the Commission had written to the
Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor, Mr. Godwin Emefiele and he was favourably disposed to addressing the forex needs of the operators in order for them to cushion the situation and the recurrent inaccessibility to forex by the operators.

Danbatta further stated that the commission had met with the CBN
governor Mr Godwin Emefiele and have extracted a commitment from him on need of  forex by the operators.

He further said since the NCC had declared 2017 as the year of the
consumer, all hands should be on deck for telecom consumers to have a fresh lease to high Quality of Service. “The consumer has to be
treated with dignity” Danbatta added, saying the “8-point agenda
drives this point home”.

The NCC, he explained, has put measures in place to check and monitor Quality of Service (QoS) on various networks “and we have sent this report to our task force on QoS and have been interacting with
governments at different levels as part of the measures to deal with
the poor QoS”.

Danbatta admonished the operators and co-location service operators to
provide suggestions on how to address the situation.

Earlier, NCC’s Executive Commissioner (Technical Services), Mr. Ubale Maska said, QoS has been a great concern as consumers inundate the Commission with complaints.

“It requires everybody’s input if the situation has to be redressed,
hence 2017 has been declared the year of the Consumer”.

NCC Director, Technical Standards and Network Integrity (DTSNI), Dr.
Fidelis Ona, explained that the Commission is aware of some of the
challenges which include Right of Way (RoW), Force Majeure, Difficulty
in acquiring new cell sites, multiple taxation and regulation,
vandalism, power supply among others.

“We are engaging stakeholders, including Industry Working Group on
Quality of Service, special committee on Counter Harmonization to
address this”.

NCC’s Head, Quality of Service Unit, Engr. Edoyemi Ogoh in his
presentation traced poor quality of service to fibre cuts, community
issues, among others.

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He said in October 2016, operators experienced 175 cuts across the
nation while they recorded 180 cuts in November and 103 in December,
2016.

There were 113 community issues in October 2016, 74 in November and
133 in December, adding that fibre cuts and community issues remain
major drawbacks for QoS.
In their various presentations, some of the operators painted a grim
picture of their encounters especially in an economy that is going
broke.

Chief Technical Officer (CTO) at MTN Nigeria, Mr. Hassan Jamil
expressed happiness with the interactive session, so that the
regulator can know our situation one on one basis…”
He said demand for both voice and data services are on the rise but we
are unable to catch up on investment because of scarce forex
availability”.

Jamil further stated that the telecom operators faced the inability to
import equipment to boost expansion because they can’t transmit forex to vendors, incessant fibre cuts and community related challenges.

He also made known that the scarcity of diesel to power base stations, right of Way issues with different layers of government in the regions and Sabotage at different level were the problems also faced by the telecom operators.

Jamil also said that the company planned to have 100 sites for Abuja
but after a very longtime we were only able to build six because of
the bottlenecks of getting approvals and until we resolve these,
quality of service will be a mirage.”