Slow Expansion of Telecoms Infrastructure, InfraCos’ Underperformance Worry NCC

The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), the telecoms industry regulator, is worried about the slow pace of the expansion of telecoms’ infrastructure across the country, blaming the situation on underperformance of Infrastructure Companies (InfraCos) that were licensed to provide telecoms infrastructure for the country.

InfraCos were licensed by NCC in all the six geopolitical regions to provide telecoms infrastructure for service providers to ride on for their network expand across the country, but the InfraCos are unable to provide the necessary infrastructure for telecoms expansion as a result of the challenging business environment.

The Executive Vice Chairman of NCC, Dr. Aminu Maida, who stated this during a media parley in Lagos, identified some of the challenging business environment to include multiple regulation and multiple taxes among others, but however said regulation of the telecoms sector at the state level would be inevitable, since states are autonomous body as enshrined in Nigeria’s constitution. He however said through collaboration with the state governments and their agencies, NCC could address some of the overlapping regulations.

“The telecoms sector has not had enough progress as it wanted with the licensed InfraCos, but NCC will do more of advocacy to drive telecoms infrastructure development in the country. In the area of Critical National Infrastructure (CNI), NCC has done a lot of stakeholders’ engagement, gathering data and looking at the impact in terms of cost when it comes to damages done to fibre infrastructure and how much of service disruption it is creating for the sector,” Maida said, while fielding questions from journalists.

Reacting to the concerns of the NCC boss, the Chairman of the Association of Licensed Telecoms Operators of Nigeria (ALTON), Gbenga Adebayo, told THISDAY in an interview that unless the government at all levels address the challenges facing InfraCos and telecoms operators in the country, the sector would continue to experience slow growth rate in telecoms’ network expansion. He listed some of the challenges to include: Challenge to Right of

Ways (RoWs); Challenge of access to funds; Challenge of commercial viability in certain locations across the country; and Challenge of unstable telecoms infrastructure, among others,

“If these challenges are not addressed, it will be difficult for InfrCos to survive and deploy telecoms’ infrastructure across the country. The period of time required for Return on Investment (RoI) for telecoms infrastructure deployment is very wide due to the nature of the business that is capital intensive. Not all the InfraCos can have the same level of access to funding, especially with the scarcity of Forex. These are the same challenges bedeviling telecoms operators and NCC had to license InfraCos to provide the necessary infrastructure for telecoms operators to ride on and expand their networks, but unfortunately, the InfraCos are faced with the same challenges. So government must rise to these challenges and address them as quickly as possible before they begin to affect the gains of telecommunications in a negative way,” Adebayo said.