telecommunication services. Even with the country’s teledensity growing to over 30 million, the impact is yet to be felt in rural Nigeria.
The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), which held between November 16, and 18, 2005 in the North African city of Tunis in Tunisia, was to review the implementation of the ambitious agenda earlier set at the WSIS Geneva Summit held in 2003.

The Geneva Summit saw over 174 countries adopting a Declaration of Principles outlining a common vision of the information society and a plan of action that sets targets to improve connectivity and access in information and communication technology use.

The Summit expects that the targets that have to be met include and not limited to connecting villages, community access points, schools and universities, research centers, libraries, hospitals, as well as local and central government departments.

The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) had in a report said that the 942 million people living in the world’s developed economies enjoy nine times better access to Internet services than all other people in developing regions. Yet, in ITU’s estimate, over 800,000 villages still lack connection by telephone line, the Internet or any other modern ICT.

become the hub of business in today’s world, driving the economies of nations.From all indication, Nigeria seems to be lagging From all indication, Nigeria seems to be lagging behind going by the WSIS initiative. Government’s poor handling and funding of ICT projects has also helped in no small way in widening the gap between the country and digitalized economies of the world.

In 2006, two different summits were held in the continent of Africa to map out strategies on how to plot the continent’s path to the actualization of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) of the United Nations despite challenges of access to ICT services. Both summits were held in Abuja, Nigeria and Cape Town, South Africa, respectively. Abuja had earlier hosted the Digital World Conference 2006 where yet strategies for bridging the digital divide between Africa and the rest of the advanced world were plotted.

The forum provided the organizers a platform to look at the prospects of adopting franchise and virtual network operation as means of accelerating telecom services in Nigeria in general and rural Nigeria in particular.
Franchise according to Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary is a formal permission given by a company to somebody who wants to sell its goods or services in a particular area.

Those pushing for accelerated communication access in Nigeria hold the opinion that unless urgent proactive measures are taken to address the communication plights of the underserved rural Nigeria, efforts at bridging the digital divide would come to naught. They insist that the provision of communication services in Nigeria has been concentrated on urban areas at the detriment of the rural populace.

(NCC) ostensibly worried by the slow pace at bridging the digital divide in Nigeria through a seamless access to communication services noted that it decided to collaborate with ATCON for the forum largely because of the sub-theme which focused attention on accelerating service provisioning in rural Nigeria.
Executive Vice Chairman (EVC), Engr. Ernest Ndukwe, who was physically present at the event to probably show how worried he was observed that though a lot has been achieved in the area of increasing teledensity in Nigeria, it remained a naked fact that many parts of the country were still unbelievably lacking telecommunication services.

Ndukwe reiterated the Federal Government’s commitment to ensuring that all parts of Nigeria were linked to the global communications infrastructure maintaining that as a primary ICT policy implementation agency of the Federal Government, the NCC “is resolute about doing whatever is necessary to ensure we achieve universal coverage where no part of this country in the next five years will be without communications network coverage”.

Nigeria (WiN) programme and the State Accelerated Broadband Initiative (SABI), all targeted at accelerating access in both urban and rural areas. These are in addition to the Universal Service Provision Fund (USPF) established to provide funding specifically for rural, underserved and unserved areas The mission of the regulator to the event he said was to listen to stakeholders’ suggestions, ideas and proposals that it intends to study and determine how best to support access to rural Nigeria through franchising and virtual operation.

He observed that this would give impetus to the Commission’s primary focus of seeking ways to promote investment that will lead to growth in subscriber lines as well as a variety of service offerings for consumers.

Ndukwe did not exit the stage without some nagging questions for participants: Who takes responsibility for consumer issues in terms of protection, enquiries, complaints etc? Who takes responsibility

for equipment type approval and site approval? Would the franchise company require an operating license from the NCC?
Virtual Network Operation (VNO), Ndukwe noted needed some level of studies to determine whether the market is mature enough and ready for operators even as he raised question on the need for a Virtual Operator when Nigeria operates a fully liberalized market.

The EVC sought to know whether the regulator should be bothered with a licensing category that is a Virtual Operator License in a technology- neutral environment, where the regulator does not get involved in how the operators build their networks and which equipment suppliers they choose. “Could it be that the concept of licensing VNOs is out of date in today’s world in the light of the fact that operators are already encouraged to share infrastructure?” he asked.

Engr. Ndukwe however, left his audience with this poser: Does the Virtual Network Operators need regulatory intervention to be successful or do they possess sufficient appeal to be attractive to Network Operators?

That was the beginning of the debate on how to use franchising and virtual network operation to accelerate the provision of communication to rural dwellers in Nigeria. Fola Odufuwa, an Executive Director with eShekels Nigeria, a foremost telecom research firm who came in as a lead presenter remarked that it may look like an irony but Nigeria still ranked highest in the patronage of telecom-related materials in the world even as it is considered a poor nation.

Research has proved that contrary to widely held belief; rural dwellers were interested in mobile phones as those in urban areas. “There is high demand for communication in the rural areas. The problem however, is access and not poverty”, according to Odufuwa.

Odufuwa who insisted that a lot of opportunities abound in rural Nigeria questioned the possibility of Virtual operation succeeding in the country without the requisite infrastructure in place. He might be talking about epileptic power supply and lack of communication facilities like broadband, which have all hampered speedy penetration of communication services in the country.

While making case for franchising as a suitable model, Odufuwa said it has the advantages of creating the ability to speedily start a new business based on proven template; ability to expand operations more rapidly across the nation and the creation of higher volumes based on national branding.

The eShekels Executive Director admitted that even in the face of these advantages, are issues that would confront its success. Some of these he said, include loss of control on the part of franchisee, delay in attaining synergy and building trust and commitment among the two parties as well as doubts in the competence of the franchisee.

He noted that franchising could help grow the Nigerian telecom industry by way of replaying the profit synergies evident in other market sectors like the Retail food services and the petroleum outlets.

Perhaps when this business model takes off eventually, the agency that would provide the necessary support would be the Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN), headed by Mrs. Modupe Adelaja.

The Director-General observed that by facilitating rapid communication, telecoms has turned the world into a global village.” Good telecoms services is necessary for national economic growth as it encourages investment, creates employment opportunities, serves as a veritable alternative to transportation as well as a major business tool.

The SMEDAN chief remarked that bridging the communication gap especially in rural areas has been met with some difficulties arising from SMEs’ poor access to finance and non-attractiveness of rural investment in telecoms by big time investors. Adelaja opined that the fastest and easiest way of reaching the rural areas was through franchising; an option she argued would present a lot of benefits to the parties involved.

While appraising the growth of the telecoms industry in Nigeria, the Director- General noted that both telecoms and SMEs are mutual catalysts for the growth of each other and therefore, recommended franchise as a business model for the fast delivery of telecom service in rural Nigeria.

The SMEDAN chief executive was not alone in this proposition if what the president of Association of Licensed Telecommunications Operators of Nigeria (ALTON), Engr. Gbenga Adebayo was to say later is anything to go by. Adebayo boasted the business model would facilitate better interface with rural dwellers. “The Franchisee is one of them, he is someone they know he lives with them, and speaks the same language with them.” He suggested that for this to be effective,