Operators face obstruction in network expansion plans



David Venn, chief executive officer, Spectranet, a 4G LTE internet service provider, has said that network congestion being experience by telecommunications subscribers will persist as operators are finding it difficult to carry out expansion of their network.

He told Nigeria CommunicationsWeek that operators are faced with a serious challenge of convincing shareholders to bring money to expand their network to offer subscribers quality service for both voice and data because of uncertainty in returns on investment.

“There won’t be improvement in the network quality service for now as operators could not convince their shareholders to invest in network capacity because there is no strong business case for such investment with the present data price.

“The present data floor in the industry encourages more people to use data service which is response for network congestion and revenue from the service does not encourage shareholders to bring money to expand capacity. Something has to change if we are to deliver quality service and what has to change is for Nigerian Communications Commission to revisit data floor,” he said.

Venn explained that the telecommunications landscape in the country is now changing from a voice centric to data centric source of revenue just as WhatsApp has almost eroded revenue that GSM operators are making from short message service (SMS).

“Operators need equipment to build towers. In the last one year it has been difficult for us to access dollar to import equipment for network expansion as well as adding capacity, the ones we are doing is from the equipment we imported before the new policy on FX, for big operators it has been very difficult for them to import equipment which has affected their efforts in adding capacity,” he said.

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