Tadesse Bakele is country manager/managing director of Ceragon, a backhaul IP solution provider. He more of a Nigerian than his mother country Ethiopia, having spent over 12 year in the country. Within this period he worked with Reltel wireless now Zoom Mobile, Harris Stratex now Aviat Network where he grow the company from $70 million annual sales to $150 million. He spoke to chike onwuegbuchi on how he plans to grow Ceragon as well as other industry issues.

Nigerian Telecommunications Space
In the next five years, Nigeria will remain the most dominant telecommunication country in Africa. This is the biggest market and will remain the biggest market. From all what we’ve seen, Nigeria has made a big leap forward since 2001 and now I see a new revolution coming, particularly with broadband. Once the 2.3 GHz license issue is resolved, we will see another revolution cropping up in this country. Those are basically the policy of the Nigerian government to make sure every aspect of the Nigerian society communicates through broadband, and this is the only way we can fill the gap in development between the rich and poor.
The government should make sure private investment is properly channeled in that direction to bridge the divide between the rich and the poor, between the well communicated and the less communicated because information is power. Nigeria’s kind of information is the power with which they can develop their country. The only problem which I see is government commitment in delivering energy. I think the best will happen if the current government is committed to finding solution to the energy situation in this country because what makes telecommunications different in this country is that diesel used in fuelling generator is eating up the progress we are making in telecommunications. Once a solution is found in that direction, I tell you it is going to be a jump. So  from the government side- energy, from the private side- more investment in broadband will make Nigeria proud.
Implications of  many Operators in the Industry
In Nigeria, if this competition was not there, we would not have reached the stage we have reached today. The competition has helped the growth so far, eventually as Average Revenue per User (ARPU) keeps declining, getting lower and lower, it will definitely reach a stage where each company may find it very difficult to make profits then that will result to acquisition and mergers. It has affected the rest of the world and will definitely happen in Nigeria and the time for this is  close. By the time companies see their margins declining, they will start negotiating- let’s put resources together, let’s come together, let me buy you, let me merge with you. I am very sure this is very near because most of the ARPU levels are declining and people will start talking now- let’s merge our energies together to save cost and come up to be more profitable to our shareholders. Definitely, the business is good, the best telecommunications policy exist in this country, NCC has done a tremendous job to make it what it is today. If it continues, it will take its natural course and people will start merging and buying one another.
Preparedness to meet Broadband Demands
Ceragon is a big company dominating the entire Asian market. Asia is a market where people have the best quality product with the least price and Ceragon has managed to dominate in that area. It has the capacity to supply the entire Indian telecommunication industry and is supporting a lot of transmission technology equipment in software and hardware. For the Nigerian market, we are prepared and this is the right time for this company to show its strength and capability to contribute to the Nigerian telecom revolution.
Ceragon in the Nigerian Telecom space
Ceragon Nigeria has been in this country for two years. We are a company basically into transport which is transmission technology. It is an inventory which the company has one of the best transmission technology microwave radios in the world. The company’s unique feature is that it is of very high quality and at the same time of the lowest price. We have come into Nigeria to really contribute to the telecom sector because we know that kind of equipment and technology that is needed to make a revolution in the Nigerian telecom sector. That is why Ceragon has come out with very compact, very high capacity IP solution and with these solutions we’ll like to beat the market. The company has finally decided to establish itself fully in Nigeria, we have necessary manpower to do design, planning, installation and maintenance. All these services will be provided by Ceragon Nigeria and we are organizing our service to provide these services to operators.
Unique Offerings
This is the time to move from PDM to all IP. The IP revolution is coming and everybody has to go IP. Ceragon is the company which was established in 1996 as an all IP microwave radio provider that is our edge. The uniqueness is, in the meantime we aid migration from PDM to IP, we provide a unique product to operators in which case they can migrate very easily from a PDM solution to a total IP solution. That is what we are bringing into the market.
We provide maintenance services. Maintenance agreement will decide whoever takes care of that, eventually the task of maintaining, supporting the spare parts and providing helpful assistance still remains with us, that is if the agreement in full. Not like before when people sell the equipment then run away, give a telephone number abroad but we will be by our customers’ side, readily available to support our technology, the technology we provided them. Still the managed service provider needs our support, needs our technology, needs our help to keep things in place. What we are dedicating to Nigeria is our presence, it is not a two-man show, we are planning to employ close to 100 people in this country and bring them to the support of operators. We understand in Nigeria, the cell site is not like the cell site in America or a cell site in Europe where you visit once in six months. A cell site in Nigeria is a 24 hours affair. It is an enterprise. Once a cell site is an enterprise, at least there are four people, two guards each, a generator operator, a maintainer, a diesel supplier, so we know the pains of an operator. So to comfort an operator, we do have to make our presence strong in this market; that is why Ceragon is up. Ceragon is determined to come up in this market in a big way to support operators and to lessen their pains.
Providing technical Support to Operators
We are planning series of training for the operators’ engineers. This kind of training will run from time to time to enable engineers in Nigeria have the capability to know our technology very well, to understand it very well, to manoveur it very well and to be able to maintain it very well. There may be companies springing up, that are specialized in the maintenance of Ceragon technology. Today, we have the responsibility to help these people provide the technical solution to every problem they are facing.
Going LTE or 4G
We are the first company which is LTE ready, so we provide the backbone for LTE. We do the backhaul, get a signal from companies like Alvarion among others, and distribute it to customers. That is our specialty. Backhauling means transporting signals from the base station to users using our VPN and we are ready.
Leveraging on Fibre Cables
That is a reason we think this is the best time to come into this market, because Glo 1 has already landed, MainOne is coming and WACS is also coming. Very soon, the entire cost of telecommunications- data, video, voice is going to crumble in this market and that will create possibility for expansion to underserved areas at cheaper prices. The cost of credit crumbling will create opportunities. We are ready to connect customers when fibre arrives. The easiest and fastest way to do it is through microwave and our microwave technology is ready to transport that signal and distribute it around Nigeria.
In microwave technology, Ceragon is the only company leveraging on its research and development portal. In most PDH, SCDH and IP technology, we carry only products developed from our R & D, produce and test it. More so, we don’t go into buying another person’s product and selling it at a profit in this market. We are the only company that has its own portal in transmission technology. Everything we sell is our own technology.
Capacity to Handle Projects
I have been in the industry for the last 12 years. 12 years ago, if you asked me this question, it would have been very difficult but today in Nigeria, there are over 250 sub-contractors who have engineering, design, maintenance capability. The only thing we have to do is select the best out of them, train them on our technology, then certify them. So we would have let’s say a hundred of them for training under company sub-contractors, the best among them will be Ceragon certified operators. That is how we would like to plan, we don’t plan to bring people from outside to do this job, what we would like to do is train existing infrastructure companies. In 1998, when I came to this country there was none but today,  there are over 250 infrastructure engineering companies who can do design, who can do planning, who can do installation and maintenance. We decided to train them and give them the capability to provide the services we want them to provide under our supervision.
Ceragon in the Next Four Years
In the next three to four years, Ceragon will be one of the best transmission technology provider in Nigeria. That is why Ceragon wants me to work with them, that is the task I was given.  We’ve made lots of investment in this market, we hired lots of people in this market, we create the capability to beat the competition in this country to make Ceragon the number one transmission technology provider in Nigeria.