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'Poor
Quality Of Telecom Service Will Soon Become History' |
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The minister
of State for Information and Communications Hon.
Salisu Dansuki Ibrahim Nakande in this interview
with AMINU DAN KOGI in Jos erpressed
the concern of the Federal Government on the current
challenges facing wireless communication in the country. |
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The
nation's telecommunication sector is currently at its worst stage
of operation having maintained steady depreciation in recent times,
what is the concern of the ministry?
We have to commend the patience of Nigerians for enduring this moment
of poor telecom services in the country. I am a Nigerian as well
and I'm equally worried over the prevailing challenges of the telecom
sector. All that the ministry can do now is to concentrate on policies
that will see to the improvement of telecom services.
The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) had already taken an
action to show that it is not ready to tolerate the excuses of the
licensed service providers and that is why it has decided to penalize
two of those service providers by asking them to pay a very huge
compensation to subscribers. I think a N4 billion naira levy has
been slammed on them by NCC.
However, we should not forget the fact that the challenge of the
telecom sector has to do with power supply. We don't have adequate
power supply in the country to sustain the sector at the moment
and that was why the federal executive council recently approved
the sum of N2.8 billion worth of facilities to be sourced to enable
us generate up to 6,000 megawatts of power.
This has been targeted to be achieved within 18 months from now.
So this is the situation where by it is not completely the problem
of one particular sector because a defect in one sector especially
power will definitely affect the operations of some other sectors.
I'm sure with time we are going to resolve this.
As a Minister of State for Information
and Communications, are you worried that since you assumed office
the communication networks in Nigeria have been on the decline?
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But you will have to
understand that the ministry is not the network service provider.
It is the private sector that is saddled with that responsibility,
and then these private sectors have to operate within the ambit
of the law and the enabling environment. Yes, I'm worried but
not because I'm a minister but as a Nigerian because my ministry
alone cannot |
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improve the telecom services,
it has to rely on other sectors to do that. However, in spite of all
odds, the telecom sector is working; it's just that they are not perfect
enough to our satisfaction as subscribers.
I want to assure that we have done a lot in terms of interaction between
us and the network service providers, so that they can be able to
improve, part of some of the challenges of this quality of service
was that the GSM service operators have sold more than their capacity
can carry. Presently we have about 10,000 base network stations and
what we require now will be close to about 40,000 base stations.
Efforts are being made and the situation at hand now is not the one
that we can do plug and play kind of situations because these base
stations require a lot of time before it can be built. First of all,
one has to buy piece of land, start building and then start operating.
I am sure that as from this June, there will be a remarkable improvement
in the system |
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because what we have done
as a government through the regulatory authority (NCC) is to
ban all forms of promos.
And of course, there is still violation because I see one or
two companies still doing promos and if these companies stop
doing promos it will reduce the volume of calls that people
usually make in course of promos and that will improve the quality
of service. In terms of infrastructure that is on ground, I
will like to appeal that we should be calm.
Why is the
nation still having GSM network problems in spite of the communication
satellite (NigComSat) launched last year? |
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The NigComSat is on
course. I paid a visit to the office recently to see for myself what
is going on there and I confirmed all is well. In fact, the Nigeria
Television Authority (NTA) recently subscribed to the services to
relay its news locally and internationally. And a lot of Nigerians
and business concerns are already enjoying the availability of NigComSat
1.
Secondly, I found out especially that the potential for that project
is great because it has the capacity to bridge the digital divide
we have in the country between the rural and the urban areas.
So when I visited there recently, I took along with me NIPOST, because
people tend to forget NIPOST in spite of its relevance to the nation.
We are talking of rural telephony, and NIPOST still have a very large
infrastructure for anyone to ride on to deliver ICT services to Nigerians,
because up till now every community you go to, there are NIPOST facilities
even though in bad shape.
So the NigComSat project is on course except that from the onset because
of the publicity that preceded the launch of the project, the other
competitors of NigComSat like Interstella, Panamsat and so on, all
these competitors when they knew NigComSat was coming, went and gave
the operators longer lease and attractive rates and took over the
market.
And that was why these service providers could not subscribe and enjoy
the services of NigComSat since then. But the federal government has
allowed NigComSat to give license to new operators who will now give
Nigerians better services and relatively cheaper rate in terms of
tariff.
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