A case for Telecoms industry using NERC’s metrics, by Okoh Aihe

THE weather has been very hot in my part of the world. Those who know the signs and times of the season attribute it to global warming, warning ominously that the weather will get hotter. Really frightening, eh?

The national grid has failed so regularly that such failure and abnormality don’t shock any more. The bizarre has become the new normal and people are beginning to feel that the lowest depth of existence is already here. With their recent increase, NERC has only plunged the nation to a new low. A number of questions flood the mind here.

Reading that letter shows the state of things in this nation and the need for government to address some urgent concerns. When the letter was written, inflation was 27.33 per cent; it has jumped to 31.70 per cent. The Naira was trading for N777 to a Dollar, which value now stands at N1, 300, climbing from an all time high of N1, 850 to the Dollar, while Diesel which sold at N250 a litre now sells for N1,500. These metrics equally affect telecom operators.

The mobile operators came into the industry when the sector had stagnated at 500,000 connected lines for decades. The operators were given a yearly obligation rollout of 100,000 lines matched with infrastructure to support the lines because of the humble history of the industry. The operators surpassed the target almost immediately and built their infrastructure in the absence of support from former monopoly, NITEL.

But this writer was reminded that in the final days of the previous administration, the NCC gave an approval which was flatly cancelled by former Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Dr Isa Pantami. An NCC source explained that the minister didn’t have the right to do so, wondering why the industry did not go to court to test the provision of the Nigerian Communications Act 2003. Here is a story that some people within the NCC may not know.

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