Government should provide subsidy for LTE deployment in hinterlands- Adeyeye

By peter oluka

Following the recent deployment of Fourth Generation Long-Term Evolution (4G LTE) network services in mainly in the cities of Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt, there are growing concerns on the inability of telcos and tier two service providers to replicate same feat in the hinterlands.

According to industry expert, Smile Communications with 800 MHz band spectrum operating a 4G LTE licence for nationwide coverage, it has the best spectrum to reach the rural areas.

But the odds against service providers are numerous.

In a recent interview with Nigeria CommunicationsWeek, Mr. OlusolaTeniola, the president of the Association of Telecommunications Companies of Nigeria (ATCON), suggested that reforms are needed in the telecom sector in a way that it identifies the opportunities that exists in truly exploring the emerging digital realm.

Nodding in agreement Mr. Aderemi Adeyeye, president, Enext Wireless Inc., traced the inability of operators to move to the hinterlands to lack of motivation or incentives from the government.

Although, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) through the Universal Service Provision Fund (USPF) has tried to support the operators to meet the needs of the underserved areas, experts are of the view there are still economic bottlenecks facing the operators.

Adeyeye said in an interview with Nigeria CommunicationsWeek, “In my view, a company like Smile Communications, by the nature of its ownership structure, shouldn’t be expected to have a national focus at the present. Yes, they want to deploy services and make money in the process; I mean there is a very little money for them from the rural areas, so they focus on the cosmopolitan areas where they could make money.

“We started our work when only Smile had LTE for deployment in Nigeria. You can see the quality of their network going down because the customer base has increased, but they are not investing in improving the quality. At the early stage Smile stood out in terms of Quality of Service (QoS). In Victoria Island, for instance, it stood out. Now Glo, MTN and other service providers are focused on LTE in VI and you can see Smile’s quality nose-diving.

“When you have limited spectrum and want to attract a lot of customers, you either have to improve on the engineering so that the spectrum could accommodate more customers or you have additional spectrum you could use to service a segment of the customer base.”

“I think currently, they are focused on getting the most out of their current investment because they seem not to be improving on the engineering of the 10 MHz. We could see it from our data. The way Smile could go to the rural areas is if government mandated them, which might not be advisable.

“Also, they could be given subsidy to achieve that purpose. We also have Bitflux which has a bigger spectrum with 30 MHz bandwidth and its license is also nationwide, even though the frequency is high at 2.3 GHz.

But, to Teniola, Nigeria cannot afford to miss the new Industry 4.0 paradigm which dwells, solely, on digitization.

“We needia reform of the telecom sector in a way that it identifies the opportunities that exists in truly exploring the emerging digital realm.

“The funding of all this is a steeple chase hurdle to the realization of this new future and it requires continuous change in the way regulation and policies are formulated.

“Right now, we are undergoing consolidation in the market what we seek are for the Government to react quickly to these changes and adapt as the technology adapts to the new Industry 4.0. paradigm”, he said.