Ahead of the 20 years celebration of telecoms operations in Nigeria, the Association of Licensed Telecoms Operators of Nigeria (ALTON), has said the early telecoms operators (Telcos) fought several battles to achieve the present seamless interconnectivity among operators.
Chairman of ALTON, Mr. Gbenga Adebayo, disclosed this while narrating the many challenges faced by telecoms operators in the last 20 years of operations, since the launch of Global System for Mobile Communication (GSM) in 2001.
According to him, “The early Telcos faced several challenges but we were able to weather the storm and came out strong in all of those battles.
First we had the battle of network connectivity, when the Nigerian Telecommunications Limited (NITEL) was the sole regulator, operator and transmission company. So it became difficult for the early telecoms operators to connect with NITEL, even when they had to pay heavily for it.”
He explained that when NITEL was the only access point, connecting other operators, through the E1 links, the early operators could not connect with themselves, without passing through NITEL, a situation, he said, compelled the early telecoms operators to build a Private Telecoms Operators (PTOs) room at NITEL exchange for the purpose of seamless interconnectivity.
“We paid for building the PTOs room, we bought the PTOs equipment ourselves and we were equally paying to NITEL for access the PTOs exchange, before the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), introduced a new signaling point called SS7, which again compelled telcos at that time, to invest in a signal converter that converts signals from NITEL’s old transmission link called MFCR2 and to the new SS7 signal link introduced by ITU, in order to achieve compatibility and seamless interconnectivity,” Adebayo said.
He further said ALTON had to fight to ensure that the barriers to interconnectivity introduced by NITEL were removed in order to allow for seamless interconnectivity among telecoms operators. The fight, he added, led to the licensing of Interconnect Clearing House (ICH), to manage the issues of interconnectivity among telecoms operators.
According to Adebayo, before the rollout of GSM services in 2001, telecoms services were the exclusive reserve of only the affluent in the society and Nigeria had less than 400,000 lines from 1960 to 2000, but as at March this year, telecoms subscriptions reached over 192 million with a tele-density of 100.80 per cent.
He, however said the success story was not without risks as the early operators took several risks to operate in a market that other operators refused to operate in, because of the perceived risk factor report, which they got from their initial market survey.
“The telecoms industry has done very well in the last 20 years, despite the challenges and risks. Nigeria has done extremely well, not in just the way we accepted the use of GSM, but by the way that Nigerians have taken joint ownership of mobile services, which have become the common wealth for all Nigerians,” Adebayo said.
Narrating the risks in the last 20 years, Adebayo said the risk factors were not with emerging technologies, because Nigerians have adapted to changes in technology very rapidly. He however said the risk factors were variables beyond the control of the telecoms operators like the harsh operating environment that led to the collapse of most telecoms operators. He said the early telecoms operators like Multi-Links, Intercellular, Starcomms, VGC Communications and Visafone, that have gone into oblivion, suffered challenges of lack of funding among other variables.
Adebayo also said the early telcos fought several battles, including regulatory battles to remain in the telecoms business today. He listed some of the battles to include Multiple Taxation, Right of Way (RoW), Interconnect services among others.
