Nigeria, best for Telecom Business – World Telecom Labs

….Tasks operators to bridge connectivity gaps innovatively

A global telecommunication equipment vendor, World Telecom Labs (WTL) has described Nigeria as the best country in Africa to invest for good telecommunications business.

This is coming against the view that absolute network coverage cannot be achieved due to the huge land mass and low purchasing power in the interior.

Nigeria has a compact area of 923,768 square kilometers (356,376 square mile) with a total population of about 200 million.

According to industry data, as at July 2019, Nigeria has over 174, 950,011 mobile subscribers while Internet users grew to 122, 681,418 during the same period.

In an exclusive interview chat with Business Remarks, the WTL Director, Mr Satya Mekala emphasized that the country’s human capital strength and its good topography position has placed Nigeria as the biggest market for telecommunications business in the continent.

“Nigeria doesn’t have complicated topography and large unpopulated areas when compared to other countries in the continent”.

However, he stressed that the misconception of having difficulties in building networks to connect the whole of country is wrong.

“Actually Nigeria is a disconnected country because almost half of all Nigerians don’t have phones. 44% of Nigerian population doesn’t use telephone according to Global System for Mobile Communication Association (GSMA) report.

“With proper regulation and more stability of Naira, the Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) will improve. I’m telling you this, Nigeria is the best market and country to invest in”, he said

Speaking further on connecting the unconnected, Mekala tasked Nigerian operators both Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) on bridging the connectivity gaps innovatively.

According to him, outside the cities like Lagos the connectivity is poor already. In the last three years, the FDI in Nigeria telecom industry has dropped significantly beyond 80%, although the telecom industry has contributed 11% to Nigeria Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

Mekala stated that networks are not meant to be luxury to the unconnected population. Networks are a need and a right of every citizen in this century.

He posited that historically the challenges of investing and building rural networks for the big telcos might not have been commercially viable, but recently, the advantages of sharing infrastructure and more innovations solutions will help bridge the market gaps.

However, there is a clear push towards commercially sustainable networks in the rural telephony space in an exclusive survey conducted by World Telecom Labs, 94% of the industry respondents said that every element of a rural network could and should be shared – and that network sharing, spectrum sharing and neutral wholesale players all offer a way to spread the CAPEX costs of rural networks.

“I feel insulted when they say network are luxury for the villagers. There is need for the operators to know the exact need of these people. The problem is that this becomes a very policy based discussion which is not going to solve anything in the short term. Operators need to look at practical solutions which are available now and then support them.

“I don’t believe when they said rural connectivity is not sustainable, that it cannot pay. Connecting the unconnected is economically viable. Experience has shown that it has significant impact on the nation’s economy in Africa. At World Telecom Labs we have been involved in a series of projects in different countries in Africa where we have shown that we have a model that reduces initial development costs and therefore guarantees sustainability.

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“The people in the rural areas are also smart. You have to give them access to the market; they are smart enough to produce the grains, so they are smart enough to generate money. So what I’m saying is that once they have access to market properly, they have more money. Once they have more money, they want to have a better life. Once they want to have a better life, they want have a better phone. That is the first preference once they have a better phone, they want better data. That is where people spend. Today it is a need, not a luxury.

“Nigeria is different not because there is no money to build regionally base networks but because the regulation does not allow the entry of new entrepreneurs that are willing to do this”, Mekala explained.

He added that government needs to be more proactive and help investors in bridging the connectivity gaps in Nigeria.