IT WORLD Why telcos should build infrastructure in unserved areas – Jegede
In this interview, the Chief Executive Officer, Phase3 Telecoms, Mr. Stanley Jegede, says there are still a lot of opportunities in the Nigerian telecom market for new investors, especially building of infrastructure in the unserved areas.
What are the indices that will attract more investors to Nigeria’s telecom market? There are existing investors in Nigeria and they have been in the country for a long period of time. What has attracted them is the returns on their investments and the returns on investments will continue to keep them and also attract more investors, despite the challenges we face as a nation. But one thing that is clear is that no country is immune to challenges, what matter is how the country manages the challenges, using technology. So investors should see more of the positive side of the country than the negative side.
I encourage foreign and local investors to invest in Nigeria because there are lots of opportunities and the opportunities still exist.
Despite the huge investments made so far by operators, there are still infrastructure access gaps…
Yes, there are some clusters that exist where infrastructure is not available and I see it as an eye-opener for investors to tap into it and invest in such areas. There are some areas in the country that people do not have access to telecoms infrastructure and there is need to bridge the access gap by investing in such identified areas.
Now the gap still exists because operators are not willing to go to such areas to invest because it does not make economic sense to invest in such areas. What are such incentives? Incentives could be in the form of offering operator, certain percentage of the total cost of what it will take the operator to build infrastructure in rural areas. It is to encourage and enable them to invest in rural communities.
Tax holidays is another form incentive that should be encouraged.
How will Nigerians benefit from infrastructure built by the operators?
Building out infrastructure has benefits in terms of economic growth for job creation, efficiency, better security and we think it is our responsibility as Nigerians to ensure that the infrastructure is built to serve our people.
We are collaborating with the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) on a number of programmes to facilitate relationships and we will continue to build our infrastructure to enable us have a fully connected Nigeria. Okay tell us about Phase3 Telecoms? We have been in existence since 2003 and we have built out unique infrastructure that leverages on power utility and our goal is to continue to build broadband infrastructure to remote parts and unserved parts of the country.
Our infrastructure is used by all telecoms operators because we operate open network.
Going forward, we see the need for of converged services, where not only telecoms operators leverage on the infrastructure, but also associated sectors that see the importance of convergence with telecoms.
What makes your service different from your competitors?
We are unique in the sense that our operations are different from the underground fibre where our competitors have to escalate the earth to lay fibre cables. But what we do is to lay our fibre cables on the high voltage of 132 and 330 KVA lines and we deploy them using choppers and most times we use power line engineers that are well trained in deploying such infrastructure. So it offers us the reliability that others do not have.
Is there any need for partnership between two operators or more?
Yes, there is need for partnership with other operators that have presence where we do not have presence, but where we cannot find trusted partners, then we will go ahead to do the investment all alone. Do you have any expansion plan? We are based in Abuja, but we provide services across the 36 states of the country. We are long haul operator, but we drop our cables at some points and build out metro capacity in areas where our customers exist. So we have both long haul infrastructure and metro infrastructure. So we cover all the 36 states of the country.
Your company has won awards, what are your secrets?
Yes, we have won and received several awards and the success factors for us as a company is that we have a dedicated team of staff that have been with the company for over 10 years and these team members are dynamic, innovative and smart and they have done everything to remain on top of their game. So I dedicate the awards to them for raising and maintaining the bar in customer satisfaction and making customers happy. The staff members are commitment and dedicated. offering