Mr. Gbenga Onakomaiya, chief commercial officer (CCO) of IHS, a company reputed for building and managing Nigeria’s Telecom Infrastructure with the highest quality at affordable cost.  Onakomaiya has over a decade experience in the telecommunications industry and worked in Motophone where he handled finance and adminstrastion.  A very unassuming and consummate salesman, he speaks with passion about collocation and sundry issue in this interview with emeka okafor.

Accident on Duty
Fortunately we have not experienced any casualty in our own case by the Grace of God and after that by the safety measures we put in place, we believe very much in safety procedures we adhere strictly to safety issues and quality issues and that is why we know we are also ISO certified.  One of the requirements for ISO certification is to be safety conscious and we do not compromise it with regards to building of sites, we go to the minutest details to ensure that things are secured both for the community and for our staff. It saves a lot of money, because by the end of the day if you don’t do that you spend it ten times more than what you were to spend initially. We don’t compromise safety, if we do, may be our certificate will be withdrawn from ISO. It’s a continuous assessment they are always on our neck, we are always ready for them
Collocation
Economy of scale has shown that you have to do something about collocation. The operators themselves are now seeing the business angle in doing that in the sense that when you, for example you  use $6000 dollar per month to maintain a site  as a company  when you have an option of paying $ 2000 a month sharing location .They are now seeing the economic sense in sharing infrastructure.
Initially, everybody wanted to provide services by themselves but  now they are now seeing the economic sense because the sites are growing .It’s now much bigger for them to maintain .They need to digress themselves from these services and focus their attention on the core things they do. The competition has been wonderful and that is what has been keeping us going. We know there is competition and we strive to be the best in what we do because we do not want to be cluttered away, competition is the driving force we have, and without competition we will be relaxed. Since we know more competition  is still coming we don’t want to lag behind. We have to make returns to our shareholders.
Problem of Touts and Youth Restiveness
It is very simple. There’s no place all over the world where you don’t have youth restiveness even in India. It is very rampant, but the way you manage it is very important. In IHS for instance, what we do is we have meetings with stakeholders, the community leaders, the youths and everybody. We call them and tell them that we are all stakeholders in the business and as such they should see themselves as part owners of the business and we tell them their benefits. You may be surprised that most of them don’t even know that there are benefits accruing to them. They believe the presence of any telecom project in their area is a national cake which they have to take their own share of but when you tell them the benefits of siting a base station in their community, that it can bring development to them either directly or indirectly because if there’s a base station in a community, there’s good network coverage in that community and you will have a lot of business centres being operated. One other thing we do is that right from the time of construction of any project; we involve the community where the project is located. We engage the local artisans and don’t hire them from outside. At the end of the day we engage two or three of them as security to man the cell site. Periodically, we engage the community in discussions to see how we can develop the community. Then we have conquered that aspect of youth restiveness because we believe in them and take them along in what we do, so they now feel we are part of them.
Leveraging on Shared Infrastructure
Oh very well. They have now seen the need and benefits of it in terms of taking the headache of maintaining, managing and monitoring the sites off them. They can now use their energy in other areas of service which they are providing. It also encourages shared expenses among two or three operators. This reduces the expenses they make and increases their profit which they can now divert in other areas.
Role in Corporate Social Responsibility
What we want to achieve very soon most companies or all the companies will be accessed not only by the profit they make but what they give back to the society. What social responsibility have you been able to do?. If you do not develop community the repercussion will be on you because you have to spend more on developing infrastructure or building infrastructure but if you develop a community you have less money to spend on accessing the community so we know by donating to them we are making things easier for us at the same time building a relationship with the community you are making the community to trust you and believe in what you do. Anytime you need anything, the community will be there to assist you.
State Government Tasking Operators to Share Infrastructure
I am hearing that for the first time that the state government is tasking telecom operators to encourage them to share infrastructure. It’s a welcome development if it is doing that, but then, as a matter of fact most operators have seen the benefits of sharing infrastructure and we are in discussions with some of them to take over their sites so that other operators who are not there yet can also collocate on the site. That is the kind of agreement we are making with them. We are not dismantling any site already built. The site that is already available can be acquired from the operators for us to manage it for them .More operators are coming in and they want coverage in certain areas so they can come in and make use of the base stations that are already in existence.
Capacity to Handle More Operators
IHS has the capacity to accommodate any new company that is coming in and as a matter of fact, we are building based on the imagination of what the future would be like, the number of operators that are coming in or envisaged to come in. We have sites that can take in at least four operators at a time. As a matter of fact, we have our equipment in the country now that can establish 500 sites and by the grace of God we should be building more 500 sites by the end of 2009. We should be commissioning 54 sites any time from now   after NCC’s approval.
IHS and Stock Exchange
As you are aware we are through with our private placement and as a result we were given the go ahead to register our shares. We submitted our application to the Stock Exchange to be listed and you will be the first to hear that we have been given approval to list on the Stock Exchange and we will be listing any moment from now officially. We are public limited liability company now and we will be fully quoted so that people can buy our shares and that is why we want to improve and continue to improve for people to be able to have better result on their investments
Best Telecom Infrastructure Provider Award Expectations from IHS
It has given us operators the impetus to work harder and as a matter of fact we have won another award from another IT magazine, IT and Telecoms Digest. It’s a pleasant surprise and another challenge for us to keep on providing good quality service to every body in the industry.
Your Role in Miss Telecoms
We have the urged to encourage the youths. We sponsored the event and gave out the first prize and want to do more than that. The winner of Miss Telecoms will be involved in a campaign that will be announced very soon. The campaign will benefit the society because we want to campaign against environmental pollution.
Why Has IHS Suddenly Become Known
IHS has been in existence since 2001. We are about the first company that went into service delivery in the telecoms industry but we have been working silently because we believe in working and not talking.  .We have built the highest number of sites in the industry.   When you consider the total number of sites built so far IHS has built at least 30% of all the sites we have today and we believe in quality. It could be because more telecoms operators are coming in that people are beginning to know us but we have been working silently. We will continue to do our work silently but the public will be seeing what we are doing.