BryMedia still hopeful on NITEL

Ben Uzor Jr
BryMedia, the second reserved bidder in the sale of Nigerian Telecommunication Limited (NITEL) with $551 million offer to buy the state-owned operator, has expressed optimism to take over the telcos despite irregularities arising from the bid process.
New Generation Telecommunications Consortium had offered to pay N350 billion ($2.5 billion) for all the components of NITEL, including the mobile unit, M-Tel, the CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) network, transmission backbone, the fixed line network and the Nigeria end of the SAT 3 fibre-optic cable network, to which NITEL has exclusive rights.
Nick Batchelor of Telecom New Zealand, technical partners to BryMedia Consortium who spoke exclusively to Business Day said: “Well we are not frustrated because as I said Telecom New Zealand International has been done this path before. We are a major international carrier with offices in Australia, Newzealand, Los Angeles, London, Dubai, Singapore and Japan. We have been involved in processes like this before, we move about 2 percent of the world’s traffic, that’s six billion minutes a year. We look for growth opportunities globally.”
In the same vein, Adrian Wood, the head of the consortium argued that the $2.5 billion bid for NITEL was irrational from an investment returns perspective. According to the former chief executive officer of MTN Nigeria, a large proportion of the funds could be channeled strategically towards positioning the company for global competitiveness after having taken possession.
“Yes, it’s a lot of money from the point of view I just gave you about what can be justified in investment returns. But more than that, it’s what has to be invested in NITEL once you have hold of it. It is not so much what you pay for it but what you then have to invest. In our own case, our bid was $551 million and over 5 years, we will invest over $5 billion. So, we think the ratio of 1:10 is a great one because by investing after possession, we will be able to build a network that reaches every corner of Nigeria, every small village and community. We would have the highest world standards of capacity and connectivity”
In drawing out BryMedia’s strategies for transforming NITEL into a world class business after taking over, Wood disclosed plans to provide telecoms services in all the 774 local government area of Nigeria. “We will have road coverage and even enable economic development. Our plans include direct fibre interconnection to Burkina Faso, Niger and Chad which of the moment are just connected by a very poor satellite. We also have a plan to upgrade the SAT-3 Cable to multiply capacity.”
He added that it would require 12, 000 km of fibre optic cable to achieve maximum coverage of the entire country. “There are already 8, 000 km right now; there are 128 breakage points in that fibre optic network. So, the first job is to repair that entire network and to extend it up to 12, 000km”, he added.