Telecom
A Call to Revamp CDMA Operations
Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA), a second generation telecommunications standard pioneered by chip maker Qualcomm, uses spread spectrum techniques and is globally acknowledged as the better technology compared to Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM).
GSM, thanks to its wide adoption in Nigeria, Africa and indeed across the globe, gained critical mass subscription, out-edging CDMA and became the dominant standard for 2G telecommunications all over the globe and currently moving to 5G. But in countries like America and Japan, CDMA still managed to find a firm footing and they are better for it.
CDMA is preferred as better technology compared to GSM, given its inherent quality in terms of data speed and capacity. There is no gainsaying that telecommunications network providers are seriously focusing on data services hence the revenue shares from voice has reduced, substantially.
CDMA in Nigeria and Why they Failed
It is pertinent to note that CDMA as a technology managed to find a use case in Nigeria at the time it stood for wired landline connections. Recall, the first set of Private Telephone Operators (PTO) in Nigeria offered services via the CDMA technology. Multi-Links Telecommunications Limited was the first to begin operations in 1998 while the likes of VGC Communications, Intercellular, Mobitel and EMIS were the preferred networks of many Nigerians in the early days of the telecom revolution.
Then, a particular GSM entrant had exorbitant call rates with SIM cards being sold as high as N40, 000 upon entry. But, a number of issues worked against the spread of CDMA networks since the GSM licensing in 2001.
The inability to have the same interconnect charges and failure to convince investors in the interconnect space, that, since CDMA required lesser spectrum than GSM, they should be allowed to provide full fledged CDMA services on the spectrum they got for WLL. That is just one case out of many. Well, the recent acquisition of Visafone by MTN Nigeria may have sounded the long awaited death knell on CDMA operators in Nigeria.
Yes, MTN acquisition of Visafone, meant the services could be spread to a wider coverage area, using the spectrum (800GHz) on fourth generation equipment (4G LTE). However, it may not be yet uhuru. For instance, can you compare subscribing to CDMA broadband service for a year with that of the GSM? While the CDMA helps to ensure stability in your business which depended largely on internet access these days, tethering your phone in order to GSM phone internet connection would bill for every kilobyte and has proved to be a very expensive option. CDMA would have saved us some headache in this time of recession.
CDMA leverages several transmitters and can send information simultaneously over a single communication channel. It uses spread spectrum technology allowing many users to occupy the same space time and frequency allocations in a given band/space. Unlike GSM, CDMA does not assign a specific frequency channel or time slot to each user but instead individual conversations are encoded with a pseudo-random digital sequence.
It is widely acknowledged CDMA showcases better technology compared to alternative technologies such as GSM and is also believed to be more cost effective for operators as the CDMA capacity advantage leads to lower tariffs. Had it this been the case, the Minister of Communications, Barrister Adebayo Shittu and his lieutenants at the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), probably, would have had a safe-sail in pushing for increased data-floor which generated much debate late last year.
During its dominant era, the CDMA operators unleashed excellent voice clarity for both local and international traffics; clearly identified lines and locations, while their data quality were often been described as first rate.
Many are still at lost over the causes of CDMA demise in Nigeria. As we speak, they are at the verge of extinction with less than 1.5million subscribers in a market where there are over 216million connected telephone lines, according to NCC statistics, with about 154million active lines. Out of the number, GSM operators account for about 152million lines. Fixed wired/wireless operators have less than 200,000 lines.
A close look at the Nigerian Telecommunications industry, as an industry analyst would put it, “one can deduce that the business model of the average Nigerian CDMA operator made it unable to compete on the same platform with GSM service providers. Almost all the CDMA operators where locally developed, with no international investors or technical partners involved in the management of their service”.
This is backed up with the fact, GSM providers- MTN, Airtel (formerly Econet, Celtel), Globacom and Etisalat due to their size and international affiliations were able to attract financing and support from foreign banks and international finance brokers. The CDMAs’ woes reached the crescendo as, financial institutions repulsed by the companies’ stinking financial records, turned their backs, preferring to fund GSM operators with proven corporate practice.
Another factor that could have worked against the CDMA operators could be there network spread, most of them were located in urban cities like Abuja and Lagos, extending their services to other regions or cities meant going back to the regulator for additional spectrum which usually came at a cost. The guidelines on their licensing hindered their spread.
Others believe that market forces like stiffer competition and the tough business climate in the country made co-location impossible in the early day thus operators had to build and maintain their telecom infrastructure across the country. Unfortunately, the industry was skewed against infrastructure sharing, by that; they shot themselves in the leg. This singular act, it is believed, signaled the present NCC’s InfraCo arrangement, where issue around co-location is industry approved.
Simply put that the inability of CDMA operators to spread massively in the beginning compared to their GSM counterparts stifled innovation, and formed the major impediment to their growth.
Way Forward
The regulator seems to have created a monster (monopoly) that will, sooner or later, turn against the market. How do we mean? Pundits predicted that in the near future, mobile operators on different platforms including GSM and CDMA will migrate to the Long Term Evolution (LTE). With LTE operators will get a speed of up to 37.5MB per second on the device as against the 3.1MB that is currently available on the 3G networks.
It is no longer news MTN acquired Visafone to access the 800 MHz spectrum band, which enabled it launch 4G LTE services. Recall, in 2007, VGC Communications Limited (VGCCL), a Lagos-based Private Telephone Operator licensed by NCC to provide cabling and radio, telephone services nationwide and had laid extensive fibre optic cables, and Internet service provision, was bought by MTN Nigeria. In other words, MTN is in a position to be a single dominant player in the voice and data markets in Nigeria’s telecommunications industry.
The question in the minds of many in the light of recent developments is ‘how will the CDMA sector thrive if it is not proactively encouraged by the NCC to do so?”
There could be hope for CDMA, especially, if they are encouraged through the Universal Service Provision Funds (USPF) to deploy services in rural areas, because 3G technology performs better on CDMA. It will be a double-win for the government which is pushing for financial inclusion at the rural areas.
The CDMAs with best spectrum to reach the hinter lands can be very valuable in that regard. For those that will be stationed at the urban centre, they can help power the Point of Sale (POS) Terminals, the key driver of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) cashless policy initiative; it works better with the CDMA technology than with the GSM technology.
Thus, is it expected the government through the NCC can give the CDMA operators a favourable licensing environment so as to continue operations, because there have been at least six CDMA operators in Nigeria from Multi-Links to Starcomms who have either exited the market or folded up citing unfavourable business conditions as a cause. It is heartbreaking that in 2001, there were 12 CDMA operators in the country and at 2016 none is viable. Remember, the death of a CDMA operator implies job loss, revenue loss to the nation and in a move towards monopoly.
Internet Exchange Point of Nigeria is positioning as a regional Internet Exchange hub for West Africa in terms of infrastructure and traffic. Muhammed Rudman, chief executive officer, IXPN, stated this at its 2026 members engagement forum held in Lagos. He noted some of the major milestone IXPN achieved last year to include one terabit of traffic recorded in March 2025.
“At that time, we became the 63rd internet exchange point in the world. Among all the exchanges in Europe and America and in the entire world, we become the number 63 in the world. To achieve that one terabit of traffic. Again, we were able to achieve two terabits of traffic within seven, eight months of the year.
“We achieve this by ensuring that we push for members to upgrade, those that were on 1 Gig to 10 Gig, those on 10 Gig to 100 Gig. We had a strategic infrastructure upgrade across our networks, put 400 Gig enable switches, increase our fiber links to all the data centers and we onboarded 17 new members last year. All the trainings and the operational excellence ensured that our network is up and running 24/7,” he said.
Industry Impact
The impact of that one terabit traffic is data sovereignty. “We were able to domesticate. Based on the survey we conducted, 54% of our members said that they are exchanging 50% of their traffic and above locally, which is really, significant one.
“We are also setting up a benchmark for other African IXPs. I can assure you that in all the community driven internet exchange points in Africa, we are the number one. There’s a community driven internet exchange point in South Africa that was established 10 years before IXPN. There is one in Kenya that was established 6 years before IXPN, but we are way ahead of them when it comes to internet traffic.
“We are also promoting intra African connectivity. As at today, we have customers from Niger, from, Burkina Faso, trying to reach to Nigeria. Recently, we onboarded a very large company in Ivory Coast, to connect to Nigeria.
“Gradually, Nigeria is tilting towards becoming the regional hub for West Africa, where you see Internet Service Providers coming to achieve that. And in terms of the traffic, in 2015 we were at four Gigabits per second. It moves to 21 in 2017 and 52 gigabits per second.
“But by the year 2023 it has reached 540 gigabits. By 2024 we have reached 900 gigabits. But by the end of 2025 we have achieved the two terabits of traffic”.
Network Infrastructure Development
Some of the technical feet IXPN achieved includes, deployment of sFlow; which is a peer to peer traffic analysis. “We’re able to see what members are exchanging between themselves and between the data centers, not the actual content or information, but rather the volume of traffic, and also between our data centers. And based on this, we’re able to do the upgrades.
“We did a multiple link upgrades from 300 Gigabits last year from Digital Realty to Equinix. It was 300 Gig as at the end of 2024, and by 2025, we’ve increased that to 500 gigabits per second. Digital Realty to Rack Center, it was 200 Gigabits per second. We also upgraded that to 500 Gigabits per second.
Open Access Data Centre to Equinix. We’ve upgraded from 20 Gigabits per second to 200 Gigabits per second. We always monitor the ports, and based on that, we increase immediately we reach the threshold of 80%.
“We did an upgrade on the IXP manager. This allows each member to have a login portal to see the traffic they are exchanging and other details, the port as well as to do their own configuration,” he added.
Technical Project Milestones
Microsoft connected cache. “We deployed Microsoft content cache and that has been deployed in Lagos. It was 25 Gigabits per second as of 2024 by 2025 we had to upgrade the infrastructure to 75 Gigabits per second servers, that will be able to accommodate all the Microsoft updates they are doing, exports, download and among others.
“This is part of the content that Microsoft is not providing locally, but we got those servers deployed, and our intention is by next year to see how we can replicate this across the country. Last year, we also deployed the same server in Abuja so that the Abuja people and the Kano people can reach that content without coming back to Lagos.
The Google Global Cache (GGC); “We are hosting all these at IXPN. We also upgraded from 53 Gigabits per second servers in 2024 to 153 Gigabits per second. And this is a huge traffic of YouTube. And as we speak, we are also working towards upgrading those servers,” he explained.
Strategic Partnerships
“We signed an MoU last year between us and an IXP in Senegal, when we went for West African peering forum. A lot of African ISPs are looking to us to see how we can guide them and support them.
“For example, internet exchange point from Gabon, internet exchange point from Rwanda and ISPs in Africa are looking at us as a model to copy, and we tend to support them. We also had a strategic partnership with CIRA, the Canada Internet Registry Association, which is similar to Nira, the Nigerian Internet Registration Association, to have their secondary authoritative servers into Nigeria as an anycast instance. And when they are hosting that, they are hosting other top-level domains as well, like alibaba.info.org.ca, are also hosted with us.
“Since they launched last year, we have seen a traffic of over 1000 DNS responses per second. Presently, there are 13 global root servers in the world, and those 13 servers are the ones that translate your IP address into a domain name. Any website you browse, you put a domain name, it translates into an IP address and its chain of referrals, Nigeria has.ng as a country, called Top Level Domain”.
Earlier in his welcome address, Charles Nmeregini, Business Development Manager, IXPN, said that the members engagement forum is more than an annual country. “Today, we pause to celebrate the milestone, the milestone that we have reached together, the milestone that have bolstered our local traffic exchange, reduce latency and significantly lower the cost of Internet access across the nations and beyond.
“However, today is equally about the horizon. It is a strategic moment as we unveil our 2026 service road map, a forward-looking rubbing designed to deepen interconnection, enhance service delivery and unlock new value across the ecosystem. In an era defined by rapid technological shift, standing still is not an option.
“This forum will spotlight exclusive, strategic business opportunities, new avenues for growth, enhanced pairing capabilities and innovative service model tailored to give your organization a competitive edge. We are not just exchanging data, we are exchanging ideas that will drive the next wave of Nigeria digital economy,” he added.
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Menxtt NG
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Menxtt NG addresses this by offering repair services for all major gadgets, saving customers significant money while extending the life of their devices. And for new devices, they provide fully tested EU-spec phones, laptops, and tablets with a 6-month warranty, ensuring both performance and durability.
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Paradigm Initiative (PIN) has strongly condemned Gabon’s ongoing suspension of major social media platforms—Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube—ordered by the Haute Autorité de la Communication (HAAC) on February 17, 2026.
Social Media
NetBlocks and independent monitors confirm widespread disruptions persisting as of February 20, driving users to VPNs amid unstable nationwide connectivity.
PIN described the blanket shutdown as a grave breach of digital rights, including freedom of expression and access to information, silencing discourse during anti-government protests and a labour strike.
The digital rights group highlighted the absence of specific violation evidence, legal basis clarity, or restoration timeline from HAAC, rendering the measure disproportionate.
Gabon’s actions contravene Article 9 of its Constitution, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (Article 19), and African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (Article 9), failing international legality, necessity, and proportionality tests.
NetBlocks estimates a $2.96 million (FCFA 1.78 billion) Total Cost Impact over two days from WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube outages, crippling entrepreneurs, small businesses, freelancers, journalists, and civil society reliant on these platforms.
The shutdown disrupts commerce, digital payments, customer engagement, and livelihoods—especially youth and informal sectors—in a nation with prior digital curbs during unrest.
PIN urged immediate full platform restoration, HAAC transparency on legal grounds and order details, and ISP notices detailing government directives.
ISPs and tech firms must uphold UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, ensuring transparency on connectivity orders and avoiding complicity in violations.
This pattern undermines Gabon’s transparency, civic participation, and democratic governance commitments.
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