Ben Uzor Jr
There is a clear transition from voice to data usage in
Nigeria’s technology space, with the four biggest telecommunications networks
generating an estimated N6 billion monthly from Blackberry Internet Services (BIS),
Benuzorreports has learnt. With the steady decline in voice revenues, operators
are beginning to pay keen attention to data services as the next revenue
generating stream. There are three million connected smartphones on all four
GSM networks, out of which two million are Blackberry devices, according to research
firm, Informa Telecoms & Media. With an average monthly BIS spend of N3,
000, operators generate about N6 billion from BIS. A senior executive at MTN
who pleaded anonymity told Benuzorreports, that BIS for quite sometime
contributes significantly to data revenues.
The telecom company in a report, weekend said data
services has continued to gain momentum, although growth in 2G data users was
impacted by network congestion. Kamba Daniels, chief executive officer,
Himmlisch Limited told Benuzorreports in an interview that the introduction of
cheaper service plans with attendant expansion of subscription base has pared
down revenue. "Blackberry in so many ways is a pioneer in the smartphone
market. "RIM tapped into the
aspirational bent of the Nigerian society; so it has remained a
status-denominator amongst the teeming population especially among the youth. There
are millions of Nigerians in diaspora; many of whom caught on to the fad early
when it held sway in the West, so they impressed it on their relatives to get
BBs to maintain easy, cost-effective communication. The Blackberry success
story cannot be divorced from the social and entrepreneurial spirit of the
Nigerian who need to stay connected to family far and wide and with the various
enterprise solutions that RIM offers like push email, twitter, BBM and Facebook
to keep abreast of their businesses".
The federal government has restated its commitment to provide
ubiquitous and affordable broadband services in the country. It has already
opened its door to the global investment community through the adoption of an
open access model strategically designed to strengthen investment in the area
of deploying in-land fibre networks needed to move available bandwidth capacity
around the length and breadth of the country. In view of this, Nigeria’s
internet access model characterised by slow and exasperating access to
cyberspace even with the growing number of undersea cable systems on the
country’s coastline, would soon become a thing of the past.
Omobola Johnson, Minister of Communication Technology,
had promised to facilitate the development of Information Communications Technology
(ICT) infrastructure in the country to increase the number of internet users in
Nigeria to 70 million by 2015. Besides, Lanre Ajayi, president of the
Association of Telecommunications Companies of Nigeria (ATCON) told Benuzorreports that telcos revenue from data services is increasing significantly. “Today,
there are a lot of people carrying their internet dongles. There are lots of
Nigerians carry blackberries and smartphones with internet connections. We have
over 45 million internet users. I don’t know why we are still stuck on mobile
access when the fixed line access should have been the primary source of
connecting to the internet.
“We need to stimulate demand by getting our schools,
hospitals and homes connected to the internet. We need to get government
services online. "We need to move our businesses online", he added.
However, Nigeria’s envisaged migration to a data (internet) service dominated
market is happening at a rather slow pace with telecoms operators’ still
generating significant revenue from voice services. Mobile telephone
subscribers in the country spent N593 billion on calls between January and
June, 2012. This is based on the widely acceptable Average Revenue Per User
(ARPUs) figure of N1, 000 per month for the telecoms industry amid a growing
subscriber base.
With the active GSM and CDMA lines surpassing the 94
million mark in January to well over 101 million in June, subscribers must have
spent at least N593 billion on making calls in the first half of the year. Industry
analysts told Business Day at the weekend that this statistics clearly shows
that there still exist tremendous opportunities in the voice segment of
Nigeria’s highly competitive market, and perhaps explains why much has not been
done in the area of data service. It was gathered that with an ARPU of N1, 000
subscriber base of 96,150,836, telecoms subscribers parted away with N96.15bn
for phone calls; while in February, when there were 96,616,580 active telephone
lines in the country, an estimated N96.61 billion was spent by telecom
subscribers. In March, 2012, the spending of telecoms subscribers on phone
calls was estimated at N99.14 billion; bringing the total telecoms consumer
expenditure on phone calls in first quarter of 2012, spanning January, February
and March at N291.2 billion.
Commenting on the increasing reliance of Nigerians on
telecoms services, Deolu Ogunbanjo, president of the National Association of
Telecoms Subscribers (NATCOMS), said “The increasing spend of telecoms
subscribers on their various network is a reflection o the importance of the
service to our daily activities.”He challenged the telecoms operators to
improve the quality of service on their networks while asking the federal
government to also help address the challenges being faced the operators in
expanding their network for improved services.
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