Poor frequency management may slow telecom growth

. . . Telecom subscriber base hit 78.9 million mark
Ben Uzor Jr

There are growing concerns that Nigeria’s inability to effectively manage its national frequency resources which would include the timely sale of available frequencies to support rollout of new technologies and services may impede the country’s quest to sustain the impressive growth recorded in the telecommunications landscape beyond 2010, Business Day can now reveal. National frequency spectrum refers to the entire range of electromagnetic communication frequencies available to a particular country including those used for radio, radar and television.

Also growth in the telecom sector has remained unabated as latest statistics from the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) reveal that active connections peaked at over 78.9 million lines as at April this year with the GSM mobile sector accounting for the traditional market dominance with over 69.6 million lines. Furthermore, the mobile CDMA segment exceeded 7.7 million lines whilst the fixed wired/wireless segment accounted for 1.4 million lines within the period.

Earlier, the NCC had declared that it would focus on the appropriate management of the national frequency spectrum. It was gathered that the telecom regulator was urgently looking at feasible ways to provide new licenses for spectrum dependent services on 2.3GHz, 2.5GHz, 3.5GHz and 5.4GHz. As at today, the 2.5GHz spectrum remains ideal for WiMAX and LTE deployment but is still managed by the National Broadcast Corporation (NBC).

With the emergence of new technologies such as Long Term Evolution (LTE), Internet Protocol Television (IPTV), Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), industry watchers assert that part of the responsibility of the regulator would be to guarantee that there are frequencies earmarked for these new services. This, they said was because the allotment of such frequencies would assist the industry to potentially get ahead of many markets thus putting Nigeria on the front foot rather than playing catch-up.

But more importantly, the proper management of frequency spectrum would further compliment the investment in the deployment of submarine cable infrastructure and further improve penetration in the country, they noted. Lanre Ajayi, president, Nigerian Internet Group (NIG) who spoke to Business Day in a telephone interview stated that there was a need for proper management of national frequency resources if the nation intends to maintain the remarkable growth recorded in the telecoms sphere.

“It is indeed obvious because all the deployment we are doing now is based on wireless technology and wireless technology demands spectrum. Moreover, the broadband revolution which we are all anticipating would ride on wireless technology because fibre cannot reach everywhere.

He went on, “When MainOne, Glo-1 and other submarine cables become active, wireless technology will be needed to push the available bandwidth to the hinterland. This cannot be achieved if there is no spectrum allocated for this. If our national frequency spectrum is not managed efficiently then Nigeria will not be able to bridge its’ digital divide. This would mean that the average Nigerian will not have access to broadband internet services. So, proper spectrum management is very imperative in our case.”

In the same vein, Titi Omo-Ettu, president, Association of Telecommunications Companies of Nigeria (ATCON) said: “NCC is required to plan spectrum efficiently. I know that they are looking critically at spectrum management. Ignorance is one of the major impediments to proper spectrum management. We only hope that there would be a paradigm shift in frequency allocation as we move forward.”

On the contrary, some industry analysts have argued that one of the fundamental problems hindering proper management of national frequency resources was the absence of harmony amongst these government institutions, the NCC, the Nigerian Broadcasting Commission and the National Information Technology Development Agency, managing the resources. According to them, these institution were not converging and hence the need to restructure the current independent markets (telecom, broadcast, computing, IT) until an Information Communications Technology (ICT) industry emerges.

This, they said was because the sector needs to recognise that convergence of technologies was challenging existing institutional set-up, breaking new content aggregation, delivery and consumption of communications services. One analyst who spoke to BusinessDay on the basis of anonymity said: “Globally, technology is converging; telecom, broadcast, computing is coming under one roof. So too, the institution managing these technologies such as the NCC, NBC, and NITDA must converge. There is no harmony amongst them, the spectrum that should have been allocated properly to enable rollout of new technologies is held up by these institutions. These institutions must come together for us to see further growth in the ICT industry.”