Telecommunications sector remains the pivot of an information society, where businesses and services are delivered via Information and Communications Technology.
The year 2008 was a mix given for telecommunications sector of the economy; it witnessed a lot of activities for growth as well as challenges.
There where issues of poor quality of services by Global System for Mobile communications (GSM), new entrances and missing of Nigeria Communications Satellite (NigComSat-1).  Also within this period, Nigeria overtook South Africa by becoming the country with the largest number of connected lines in Africa within the first quarter of 2008. Within the year, telecommunication penetration reached up to 85 percent in Nigeria. By the end of October 2008, Nigeria had attained about 59 million lines, (57.6 million of which are digital mobile lines), and the teledensity figures soared from the 0.4 lines per 100 inhabitants recorded in 1999, to 42 lines per 100 inhabitants by the end of October 2008, according to NCC.
For the regulator the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) the year 2008 is top, being a year with highest number of active telephone lines, almost 60 million as at December. The regulators spent majority part of the year addressing quality of service issue by the network operators. Issuing several warnings to GSM operators as well as sanctioned some of them to pay compensation to their subscribers for providing below standard services.
The Commission blamed poor quality of service delivery by operators on network congestion explaining that some of the operator does not have enough capacity to connect the number of subscriber they admit to their network. This led to ban on some of them from carrying out promotions geared towards attract new subscriber to their network.
However, operators lay claim to erratic power supply and vandalization of their equipment as being responsible for their inability to deliver quality of service. Operators experienced highest incident of theft of power generating set as the three major operators in the GSM space was losing an average of four generating sets every week; there were also an increased record of  cut on transmission cable by both vandals and government contractors working on roads.
However, many observers believed that the regulator was too soft for the operators as they failed to enforce strict measures that will bring a lasting solution to the problem within the period.
Operators in review
This space also saw in 2008 the rollout of service by the fourth operators Etisalat in some major cities. It would be recalled that Etisalat acquired 60 percent of Mubadala license in the country. Etisalat came at the time GSM service was bedeviled with quality of service issue, which observers said will be an advantage if they able to deliver a better service quality than its counterparts.
For Globacom, the year 2008 is prosperous, the company has move from a local operator to secured operating licenses in two West African Countries- Republic of Benin and Ghana. The company also celebrated 20 million subscriber base on its Nigerian network as it marked 5 years anniversary, although the Glo network needs serious expansion to accommodate the growing number of new subscribers. The telecommunications giant has last year completed and launched over 80 per cent of its fibre optic ring across the country and is planning to complete its submarine cable project this year.

Last year was not such a good time for MTN as it battled with expansion of its network to provide enough capacity to convince NCC to lift the ban on the company from running promos. Although, it achieved this but, it really was a major set back for the company in its bid as a leading telecom solution provider. In spite of all these, MTN managed to launch its 3.5G service commercially and introduced ‘One World network’ a cross border service that allows MTN subscriber to make, receive call as well as recharge their phone in three West African countries, that include Nigeria, Cameroom and Ghana.
Like MTN, Zain was under the ban and sanction by NCC as a result of capacity issues, which prevented the network operator from engaging in a significant activity in the past year. However, a remarkable thing that happened in the network is the re-branding from Celtel to Zain. The re-branding is described as a unification re-branding which saw all the company’s operation in both Africa and Middle East operating as a single brand against what it used to be.
In a similar vein, Reliance Telecommunications (Reltel) having successfully completed its private placement offer, re-branded to Zoom Mobile at the instance of its new equity holders.
Mtel remain sealed within the year despite promises by the federal government and the new management of the Nigerians Telecommunications Limited (Nitel) controlled by Transcorp, to revive the company within 100 days after it took over. Mtel workers engage in many protests of unpaid salaries and allowances, while the subscriber base of the network dropped to less then 10,000 subscribers nationwide.
The year 2008 could be described as Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) year, as operators of this technology witnessed unprecedented growth. Operators such as, Zoom, Multilink and Starcomms recorded significant growth in the number subscribers on their network, as the dual of Multi-Links Telkom and Starcomms hits 2million subscribers each. Industry watchers attributed the growth in subscriber base of CDMA operators to challenge of poor quality service experienced last year by GSM operators, most promotions in the industry was run by CDMA service providers which accounted for the growth.
More so, Visafone which unveiled its brand and services on February 22, 2008 became the first telecoms company in Nigeria to roll out commercial operations in 12 states and over 40 cities from day one. It has since spread its coverage areas to 17 states and over 150 cities and recorded an unprecedented 1 million subscribers in less than 6 months of operations.
The company has also unveiled a new and innovative product that extends its value added services to its subscribers. The product, called the RC Data Pay, allows data users (internet subscribers) on the Visafone network to recharge or pay for internet subscriptions through their handsets, using recharge cards.
Expectations of 2009
The importance of telecommunications in the economic advancement of the country has placed much burden on the service providers in the sector. Virtually, every sector of the economy rely on one service or the other of telecommunications providers, for instance Automated Teller Machine (ATM) that enable bank account holders to make withdrawal through the machine at anytime of the day is powered by telecommunications solution.
Subscribers of telecommunications services and solution expect in this New Year a significant improvement in service availability up to 95 per cent, and quick resolution of downtime as well as improved customer enlightenment.
Mr. Deolu Ogunbanjo, president, National Association of Telecommunications Subscribers of Nigeria (Natcomms) described the out gone year as being characterized by poor quality of service in spite of efforts by Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) to address it. He noted that last year was slightly better compared to 2007 especially during the festive period as greater percentage of short message service was delivered on time.
He explained that communications is a two way thing where both caller and receiver need to hear each order for it to be completed, but decried a situation that is prevalence in the industry especially with Global System for Mobile communications (GSM) operators where one makes call and will not hear response from the receiver and the customer is charged for a problem he knows nothing about even as no service was rendered.
Subscribers according to him, expect in 2009 better quality of from telecommunications operators even as they argued NCC to do more in addressing congestion issue in the sector.
Ogunbanjo also decried a system where NCC kept allocating trenches to operators without them exhausting the number range. He added that each trench consists of 10 million numbers, and with almost 60 million subscribers it is expected that each of the three major GSM operators should have two trenches each. But, regretted that a situation where some operators presently have four number trenches which ordinarily such operator should have about 30 million subscribers, which is not the case.
He commended the new entrant into the GSM space Etisalat, for introducing innovative services such as caller notification when the subscriber phone is switch off, and advised other operators to introduce that service.
Natcomms president, also expressed his association’s readiness to challenge Association of Licensed Telecommunications Operators of Nigeria (Alton) in court if it goes ahead in this New Year to implement indiscriminant hike in tariff based on unfriendly operational environment. He lamented the high cost of intra and inter network text message, which according to him operators have refused to heed the call by both NCC and subscriber to reduce it from N15 for inter network SMS to N5 as is the case in other developing countries.
On the operators stand point, Engr. Gbenga Adebayo, chairman, Association Licensed Telecommunications Operators of Nigeria (Alton), described 2008 as a more challenging year for operators as issues of quality of service impacted on operators.
He explained the impact as a result of energy crisis, damage of operator’s infrastructure, capacity issues and inadequate national data for planning.
According to him, operators did not get any help from government through improvement in power supply, damage of operator’s infrastructure which continued unabated and absence of national data.
He noted that operators dealt with the issue of capacity as they impact of network expansion work embarked upon by operator paid off with stable network experienced during the festive period.
He stressed the need for government to ensure that it live up to its responsibility of providing stable power supply and security of operator’s equipment, as there is no miracle that can be done to improve quality of service if the energy issue is not addressed.
He however, expressed hope that with the current engagement between operators and relevant agencies of government on the best way to address the challenges, quality of service will tremendously improve this year, otherwise there is no guarantee that the stable network being experience will last forever.