be more than it should be within a period of time. That is because a country of about 120 million with less than 1million telephone lines, and all of a sudden you begin to provide that service in multiple of millions, it is normal that you have more people signing on to the network; that is expected. Because the country is just catching up with the rest of the world so we have what is called 'The Growth'. In real term, you cannot regard it as astronomical because what we are doing is to catch up with what we have lost over the years. However, networks are being expanded, we are doing more to deploy capacity and the challenge of deploying network is taking off, that is directly where you have the expansion, where you bring the critical element to deploy.

Access to site, access to some neighbourhood, to some location is the problem again. Communities do not allow you, local governments do not allow you; that is why I started by saying that the problem of quality of service of the telecom operator is not far away from the general social economic problem of the country.

You know that the operators are not operating in isolation, we are operating within the framework of the social structure and now we are faced with the challenge of socio-cultural environment.

Can't the telecom operators consider alternative energy sources like solar, bio- diesel as some are suggesting?

Whatever solution you propose to the energy problem, that is not going to solve the problem of the national grid; you are only solving a fractional part of it because today, the problem of power supply cuts across all sectors of the economy. Those who vandalize infrastructure are by-products of unemployment, those who cannot lay their hands on something to earn an income.

So if you provide power today, you not only solve the problem of telecoms, you solve the problem of other social services including local manufacture, local provision of goods and services and so on. If you say that operators should begin to look at alternative power source, what about security? Those who are vandalizing the local generators will end up destroying those elements, which you have provided with a view to giving you independent power supply.

Telecommunication is terrestrial, it needs ground infrastructure, and it means that wherever you are providing coverage you must have physical presence. So, how would you see a neighbourhood of 10,000 square kilometres that is all the time in darkness, you have a fixed spot of 100s of telecommunication base stations with electricity supply, what do you think will happen? It is only normal that the people will react against that kind of thing.

We are saying that all those other means of power source like solar, generator, and bio-diesel are all alternative back up but what has happened now is that the public means has become the secondary and all those other sources you are talking about are being considered as the primary, the reverse should be the case.

It will not matter if you have public power supply for 22 hours of the day and you have a gap of two hours. If you have to fill the gap, generator or any of those others that you are talking about can fill this. But if you have to provide power for almost 23 hours of the day from other source, you know there are the cost element, security element and the maintenance. So you are saying that as we maintain thousands of base stations across the nation, we should also take along the responsibility of maintaining power supply.

I am saying generally that as a nation, we cannot run away from the crisis of power supply in this country. If you say today that power is for only those who can afford it, it is like our minister many years ago that said that telecom is not meant for the poor; in the circumstance that we were at that time, may be it was logical to say so. So to say today that the problem of power is insurmountable is like making a ridicule of our self as a country, we must discontinue the acceptance of abnormality as a norm.

The energy crisis in this country is abnormality we must reject it as a people. If we can solve the problem in telecom why can't we solve the problem in power? It is just to have the willingness on the part of government to create the enabling environment and to allow the private investors to come in. And I do not think that to take power stations hundreds of kilometres away and send it over the national grid will solve the problem, you must build every neighbourhood, every city and particularly every industrial neighbourhood and provide local power source.

What practical steps should the government take?

Government must declare, as it is in the intention of government, a national power emergency. I don't think there is a short cut to that. Government must say it is enough with this power problem and we must solve it. It will take time because even if we say today that we declare an emergency on power supply, those components are not manufactured here. We must place the order, we must import, we must install and we must commission. So even if government says let's begin now to solve the problem, you can't actually see a noticeable improvement till another six to eight months.

What if network operators begin to get involved in building independent power plants?

Why network operators, why not the manufacturers? Why not the Oil and Gas? At the end of the day, what we are saying is let government provide the right environment then people will express interest in those services, uniform operators will provide the services.

It is not our core business. Let those who have expertise in the business of power do the business of power, ours is the business of ICT. Do not wear us down with all the social responsibility, all the government responsibility behind generating power. Certainly, it will be of interest to some operators but we cannot as a way of solving the problem say let telephone operators begin to provide power.

Is it not amazing that a vandalized base station in Warri could affect service here in Lagos?

There are three sides to that. In the first instance, every neighbourhood is faced with certain environmental problems. The problem of the Niger Delta is not the same type of problem as we have in Lagos. The problem of Lagos is not the same type of problem as we face in the North. In the South- south, people say Niger Delta; so, what about when you leave south and you move to Enugu and Onitsha? There is no Niger Delta crisis there but then you are faced with problem of local government who will give you the same stress as the Niger Delta people will give you.

Then come to Lagos, it's the issue of the area boys, who will give you the same stress. Then go to the North, you are faced with the problem of the local government and local authorities; every area is faced with some problems, which are related to their location but at the end of the day it's the problem of difficulty in access to telecomm infrastructure.

It now depends on how technical the area is for example, we have optic fibre ring round this country ranging from the South, the South-south, the South- east to North and then back to the South. You have a chain recovery network to roll down the traffic from where it has failed through another route may be towards the North. Then in the North, you have the issue of the roads, where we see willful and unwilful damage to underground telecom infrastructure, and you loose the link towards the South and you loose redundancy towards the North.

What is important to the man making the call is not these things we are saying but the bottom line is that transmission has been isolated. That is why I said in the beginning that the problem of quality of service of telecom is the by-product of the failure of our social infrastructure. Unless those social problems are dealt with, one can't guarantee quality, and unless government begins to isolate telecommunication from all forms of interferences, we might still have a long way to go.

Unfortunately, we went to celebration too early as a country. I have explained it, this is a country of about 150 million people with only 35 million lines, and we still have a market of over a 100 million subscribers. If now at 35 million subscribers we begin to say operators must pay this, must pay that, you are killing the growth. We must take telecom as belonging to all of us therefore, you and I must see ourselves as a stakeholder in the sustainability of telecom industry.

Do you think there is total deregulation of the industry? There is, regulation is one, deregulation is another. What we are talking about is interference borne by certain tiers of government and some locals. The law is clear, telecom is at the exclusive list yet, we have the State Government who came to say I am a State, I have right to environmental protection; I am a Local Government, I have the right to trade tax, to mobile advertisement tax.

They come to say you pay for this; you pay for that, at the end of the day it impacts on service delivery. Government regulates, yes but we are saying government should not leave it only at regulation or at deregulation; government should ensure that what is deregulated is allowed to survive. In this country there is a law against miscellaneous offences, damage against public infrastructure. When you are caught damaging things like power and telecom infrastructure, you are liable to some terms of imprisonment. Government must begin to operate those laws; when people are being punished for damaging social infrastructure, it keeps our national asset.

Among the tiers of government, whose duty is it to regulate the ICT?

It is the federal authority; and it must make a statement. The law of this land must be made clear to the people that telecom is in the exclusive list.Why is it that it is only telecom operators that are made to pay for tower? You know how many towers the Power Holding Company of Nigeria has across this country? They have the high-tension span across the length and breadth of this country and nobody is asking them to pay; that is because they belong to the government.

If you talk about environmental impact, the electric tower has the same impact on the environment as the telecom tower, so if you say that the telecom operators must pay millions for those towers on yearly basis then what is good for the goose is good for the gander; they should ask PHCN to do the same.

networks in one network; it does not matter whether it is the GSM, CDMA or fixed line. Today, a man may carry three telephones, the three phones are pay as you go, and he pays between N15 and N17 per minute. If the same man takes the money and buys a fixed line from limited mobile operators, between that line and a GSM network he might have a tariff that is even as low as N15 per minute. Those are the elements of competition.

Again, we should be careful when we are talking about low tariff; tariff is something we must balance with capacity. You ensure that you balance between how much is chargeable because don't forget that the per capita income of average Nigerian has increased and the disposable income of average Nigerian has also increased.

People who were living below the poverty line are now living above the poverty level. We have more people at the lower level being attracted to the network and are able to make calls. People who time past could not do more than flashing can call for few seconds, they can do a few holding seconds because there is an increase in the income of average Nigerian.

So, if you are talking about tariff, you must balance that with the ability of the service provider to be able to sustain the network, because one promo can destroy the entire network. I have said that it is all networks in one network; if you drive one network so low in price and everybody tries to go in or out of that network, it will roll back on the entire national network.

We all know what has happened recently to some promo by some operators; it had a spill-over effect on the national network. People are not able to call into that network and people are not able to call from that network. You must not keep the price at the level that is driving the network down. By the time the networks are in sufficient capacity, nobody will have to appeal to the operators to reduce the tariff; they will have to do those incentives that will attract people to their network, part of the incentives will be to lower their rate.

How come the operators do not know their capacity before they go into some promo?
There are two sides to what you have just raised; you can't say you have capacity when you don't have because everything is reported, everything.

But what have proven us wrong are the resilience and the dynamism of the Nigerian people. Nigerians are highly dynamic. Take this example, the network operators sit down and realised that at certain time of the day, after mid night we have a headroom of fifty per cent and it says let me give forty per cent more of the headroom that I am having because it has gone into market analysis and say if I give this, we are likely to attract so and so number of people into using the network at this time.

They say between mid-night and 2.00am I will give fifty per cent reduction, between 2.00am and 4.00am when many people are deep in sleep I will give the call free. Nigerians stay awake to use the network. These are things that will not happen in developed countries.

point where such service affects the network and the operator does not discontinue then you can blame the operator. opening it to the same failure rate that the current infrastructure is open to. But I can say here that at any time when these promos were introduced and the operators see the impact on network quality, immediately they discontinue the promo. It's like a man who has the spirit to give and he gives but the reaction of what he gives proves him wrong, he just have to retrace his step and say, gentlemen I tried but I didn't succeed. So, to go back to where I started from, no network operator will give incentive to the subscribers if he doesn't have the capacity to do it. The report showed that there was headroom to do it, operators did it and the subscribers proved them wrong.

Competition cannot cause that kind of thing?

No, because at the end of the day, the only element that could make you survive in a competitive market is in the quality of service. Do not forget that today people are not even saying that the services are expensive; they are saying that even if they are paying high, they should get a value for the payment.

So, I am saying that the strength of any operator is being able to deliver good quality service at a price that is affordable to the subscribers.This kind of promotion cannot be driven by an attempt to attract people to the network if they don't have the capacity, because it may lead people away from the network.

How do you react to the recent directive by Lagos state government asking telecom operators to stop mounting masts in the State?

I think what the Lagos state government is doing is to harmonise the process but the public seem to misunderstand this. Government has said a number of operators that have approval in doing what they are doing should produce the approval so that they can harmonise the process.

Because government have seen that at certain time multiple approval were given to operators for certain roads, they are saying let's now begin to harmonise the process. As stakeholders, we are working with government to ensure that that process see the light of the day. It is not that we are in conflict but as responsible corporate organisation, we believe that if this process is harmonised, it makes our life easier, it makes our operating environment much better.

equipment that is being deployed, but about the local environment where these equipment are placed. There is no feature you find anywhere in the world today that you don't find in Nigerian network. We can't be behind the world because we have so many socio-political problems. We must move in line with the world because the problems we are facing today are surmountable.

We have said is a global system so we are deploring network that is world standard.
3G today is the language of the world and we are speaking the same language. However, we must be aware that it takes time, it takes process to deploy network. It is not something you can do overnight; we are in a country that has operated over forty years without the right telecommunication infrastructure and we are now trying to build it within ten years, even when you have the money.

If it were so easy to deploy network, how did it happen that NITEL despite the budgetary and extra-budgetary allocation over the years could not deliver more than 500 lines after 30 years? If it were so easy to deploy network, how come NEPA as they were so called, in spite of the huge extra-budgetary allocation cannot do better than what we have today in terms of power generation. This tells you that you may have the money, you may have the resources but there is a minimum in time and Nigeria is paying that price. What we lost in 30 years we are trying to catch up with in 10 years; certainly there will be hiccups here and there.

insurmountable; today the issue of interconnectivity is behind us. The problem we are facing today is that the infrastructure we built at that time, which is supposed to have a minimum life span of 15 years, has been short-lived by damage and vandalization. Government should come to the aid of service providers in this regard.

How far have your Association gone with the FCT problem?

The problems are still there. What we took to House of Representatives recently was the problem of FCT. What happened was that since 2004 the FCT authority has not allowed any operator build new site in Abuja. What we have been doing is to fine-tune what we have. This is on account of some laws that prevent operators from building a cell line station; they say that they are implementing the Abuja master plan design over 30 years ago when even the world does not talk about GSM.

There is also the issue of taxation; this has escalated to the highest level and I know that the past administration set up an intermediary committee to look into the deployment of masts and high towers across the country.

We are also aware that the report has been turned to government; we expect that government will issue a white paper on that.

The Blackberry phone is argued to whittle ISPs influence in Internet service delivery; do you subscribe to this?

I disagree. Whatever service you provide, whatever thing you do, try and provide the best that you can. If the service were good, advertisement, promotion would do very little for you. So I am saying ISPs should do more than they are doing today.

They should give all kinds of services that are within their license scope at the best quality. Again, mobile will forever remain mobile; it's only in our country that you see people with more than one mobile phone. In other countries of the world, people have more than one telephone line.
I have said that it is all networks in one network.

What happens in those developed countries is that in the offices people have access to fixed line, at home people have access to fixed line so, mobile becomes applicable to mobile usage, away from your office or away from home. And the principle of whatever service is provided on the mobile is based on that. It gives you the comfort of mobility that you are moving your contact with you; you are moving your office with you.

If the service at home works, it takes a man that is not normal to come home and sit on his mobile phone and begin to operate the Internet. If the telephone in the office works, no man will sit in the office and begin to operate the Internet via the mobile. So the mobile I still believe, is part of the element of growth in our society. And when the network has grown well enough, mobile will remain mobile and fixed will remain fixed, there is room for everyone.

must pay our dues, all these are coming on the account that we probably do not want to be patient enough to pay our dues. And we must do it rightly. That is why I said slowly, but rightly. It is not very convenient to put microwaves here and and there to connect infrastructures. If you don't install long lasting infrastructure like under ground optic fibre backbone across the country, you will grow to a certain level and you will begin to limit your growth due to limitation and capacity. But what the Nigerian operators are doing is to deploy the right backbone, the right infrastructure and the right transmission in other to build a self sustaining, long lasting telecom network; for this we should commend the operators.

We are yet to feel the impact of NIGCOMSAT- 1,why?

They are now in the early stage, I do know that there are plans to go into commercial activities. But one thing that has been of concern to me is when I begin to read on papers that the officials of NIGCOMSAT are asking for license to go into terrestrial network. I think that is away from the objective for which NIGCOMSAT was set up. I spoke at the sitting at the house that we must not make the mistake of bringing in NITEL through the back door.

We have seen from the example of NITEL that even if today we have a different conception about telecommunication, the fact remains that government has no business in that. So, when NIGCOMSAT begins to ask for license to do 3G or 2G, one begins to wonder if government is not saying they are deregulating the sector and through the back door bringing in another company of its own to compete with those already in the business.

development. But government should not make the mistake of the past to provide terrestrial network.

This August makes it six years of GSM in Nigeria, are you impressed?

Quite impressed, the reason is that Nigeria is not behind the world. I am here today, if I arrive at Europe tomorrow morning, I feel the same as I feel in terms of availability of service; we are not behind the world. You may say that there are quality issues but I have said it is a process of growth and we would get there.