Telecoms Operators Lambast FG over Poor Electricity Supply

Telecoms operators were incensed Tuesday over the protracted electricity crisis in Nigeria and federal government’s repeated broken promises of stable electricity for households and businesses.

The operators, who expressed disappointment over failure of government to address the lingering problem, said the situation has compelled them to consider alternative power supply sources, which amount to additional costs.

Chairman of the Association of Licensed Telecommunications Operators of Nigeria (ALTON), Mr. Gbenga Adebayo, who was a guest speaker at the Industry Consumer Advisory Forum (ICAF), organised by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) in Lagos, said at the inception of the issuance of licences to operators of Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) in 2000, the federal government made a commitment to the telecoms licensees, that it would provide 18 hours of constant electricity supply daily to telecoms operators for the first 24 months of their operations in the country.

According to Adebayo, government’s promise on telecoms matrix during its advertisement on telecoms licence auction, encouraged the pioneer GSM operators like MTN and Econet Wireless (now Airtel Nigeria), to invest heavily in telecoms service rollout across the country within the first two years of their operations. He said the operators were trapped midway into their investment plans, when they discovered that they had to also invest in alternative power to boost the base transceiver stations, commonly called the base stations, since government had already shown sign of failed agreement on its earlier promise on electricity generation and distribution for the telecos.

Adebayo said the situation not only made the operators to incur additional expenses on service rollout, it also affected the quality of service, as currently being experienced by telecoms subscribers.

Adebayo insisted that fixing electricity remained the responsibility of government and not the responsibility of the telecoms operators, whom he said were forced to invest in alternative power supply at extra cost to them, in order to power their base stations for the purpose of achieving strong connectivity links between the base stations and mobile phones, via a radio frequency transmission link.

The ICAF forum, which was organised by NCC to discuss challenges of telecoms subscribers, blamed government for some of the challenges facing operators and subscribers, and called for the immediate intervention of government to salvage the situation. “For instance telecoms operators invest a minimum of two generating sets for a single installed base station, whereas the total number of base stations across the country

from all GSM networks, is well over 25,000, and when this is compared with the high cost of diesel, which is between N120 to N150 per litre, you will appreciate the heavy investment of telcos in the purchase of diesel, talk less of the cost of maintaining the generating sets,” Adebayo said. He further explained that telcos had to also invest in renewable power from hybrid solutions, in order to cushion the effect.

In order to address the challenges faced by telecoms operators and their subscribers, the forum stressed the need for government to declare telecoms infrastructure as critical national infrastructure. According to Adebayo, when this is achieved, there would be proper monitoring of telecoms infrastructure and anyone caught vandalising telecoms infrastructure, would be arrested and persecuted like it was done with NITEL and electricity facilities in the past.