NCC: STALLING NIGERIA’S ADVANCEMENT

The recent standoff between the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) and NigComSat over the former’s refusal to recognize the latter’s right to provide telecommunication services is a study in the attenuating mentality that has stymied our progress and conditioned our underdevelopment. It says so much about our nation as a paradox with all the requisite credentials for success and yet the apparent reality of failure.

That the NCC is vehemently opposed to NigComSat’s foray into the telecommunications sector stupefies reason. Were all Nigerians to be aware of the facts of the matter, there surely will arise the clarion call: ’Ndukwe must go’; for it is the headship of that body – the NCC – that has chiefly instigated the negation of the very objective it is supposed to promote, all in the pursuit of personal whims. Ordinarily, it ought to be that the NCC would work in tandem with NigComSat to conduce to the nation’s growth and development. Alas, this is not the case as it appears the NCC is provoked by the ostensible prospect that NigComSat will encroach upon its turf.

The issue is that the NCC has refused to grant NigComSat the spectrum and frequency allocation it needs to deploy its services, despite an extant presidential approval for specific spectrum and frequency given to NigComSat by the erstwhile Obasanjo administration. The Presidential approval had in fact provided for “total” frequency license to NigComSat for any service it may wish to offer. NigComSat does not therefore need another approval from NCC. If government is a continuum as is often said, then NCC’s refusal is tantamount to insubordination, because having been incorporated by the Federal Ministry of Science and Technology as a limited liability company (on the 4th of April), in concordance with the provisions of the Executive summary and Business Plan of the project approved in 2004, NigComSat’s Memorandum of Association clearly allows it to provide telecommunications services.

This is not, matter of factly, peculiar to NigComSat as practically all companies

that operate and manage communication satellites also engage in the provision of end to end services. Many of us know of Thuraya, that its services penetrate even the remotest of locations. But Thuraya, though it provides telecommunication services with its branded handsets, is actually a satellite operator which is essentially what enables it to offer the kind of telecommunication services it provides. There are many other satellite operators providing end to end services such as Korea Telecom, Telenor Network, Singtel/OPTUS, ASTRA, Eutelsat, Quetzsat, SES GLOBAL (the spacecraft fleet of which includes the ASTRA satellites in North America and the NEW SKIES satellites in Africa, the Middle East, South America and parts of Asia), ARABSAT ( the leading provider of satellite communications in the Middle East), INTELSAT ( the satellites of which carry almost all international television broadcasts), SATMEX (the leading satellite communications provider in Latin America), NILESAT (the Egyptian satellite company), TELESAT/INFOSAT (INFOSAT being a subsidiary wholly owned by TELESAT Canada) and INDOSAT (which operates in Indonesia).

By deploying telecommunication services, NigComSat will therefore be doing what its counterparts all over the world are doing, and this is by no means something to be disallowed. Contrariwise, it is to be wished for, supported, promoted and celebrated by all Nigerians, in view of the immense and diverse benefits it stands to impact upon the socio-economic aspirations of the country. To be sure, the existence of NigComSat is, by any standard, no mean feat, especially for a developing country like Nigeria. An enormously important milestone was attained by Nigeria having a strategic infrastructure as NigComSat. NigComSat has availed Nigeria with satellite communication which holds great promise for this country by guaranteeing the transfer of unimaginable quantum of data, besides the sophistication it will provide through the introduction of innovation technologies which were previously unavailable or limited.

NCC, of all agencies, cannot claim not to know NigComSat represents for Nigeria a new beginning, given that it provides a major technological platform for bridging the ‘digital divide’. Most confounding is that NCC under Ndukwe has elected to constitute itself an impediment to NigComSat’s potential, despite the salutary fact that NigComSat will give it significant leverage once engaged in the deployment of its varied bouquet of services. Why would NCC stifle a development that bodes well for it? What with all the complaints about dropped calls, unclear signals, difficulty in establishing connections, jamming and poor data services; NCC should, all things being equal, crave the arrival of NigComSat, because with NigComSat the quality and access to communication deployment will not only improve greatly but also the cost of telecommunications will be overwhelmingly curtailed – including the cost of VSAT (Very Small Aperture Terminal). This is due to the reliable backbone structure NigComSat will offer for carrying data, voice and video traffic, thereby bringing Quality of Service (QoS) improvements. As it is, the various problems plaguing our telecommunications industry is an indictment on NCC’s regulatory role.

With its modern and comprehensive satellite-based communications system, NigComSat will revolutionize interconnectivity as well as provide comprehensive, secured, qualitative, and value- added services to Nigeria and Africa. Compared with other existing communication satellites on the African continent, NigComSat is most able and best qualified to facilitate better, cleaner and cheaper services to operators and end-users alike. NigComSat’s satellite technology will not just considerably reduce the cost of calls, but will also increase the efficiency and performance of existing telephone operators. It will provide a competitive, modern satellite-based communication solution for Nigeria, for it will ensure rural and unserved urban-centres access to telecommunication services as remote areas will be able to access affordable voice and data services using satellite technology; to say nothing of its capability to avail consumer broadband services to private homes, as happens abroad, while delivering internet services to primary, secondary and tertiary institutions all over the country. NCC is well aware that any service provider using NigComSat stands a better chance of providing better telephony services using cheaper equipment. NCC also knows that NigComSat’s transponders are aggressively priced to offer cheaper bandwidth to telecommunication operators which will in turn translate to cheaper cost for end-users. Still, NCC knows that NigComSat will provide GSM back-hauling services at affordable rates to operators, helping them trunk bulk data and thus reducing congestion on their network infrastructure, and NCC knows NigComSat will provide Data trunking solutions that will make data distribution easier and cheaper for telecommunications operators, improving the quality of their service at lower costs. Why then would NCC, knowing of all these derivatives, refuse to oblige NigComSat its spectrum allocation even when NigComSat, once fully operational, will conserve for the nation a capital flight of over US$ 95 million spent annually on bandwidth by Nigerian users and over US$ 660 million by African users for telephone trunking and data service transport?

The network congestion that has sprouted from poor network planning in the industry, and which has given rise to the epileptic services dispensed to Nigerians is aided and abetted by NCC’s weak regulatory sanctions. Pundits have affirmed NCC’s complicity in all these by adverting to insider knowledge of Ndukwe’s conflict of interest and hence his tepid response to the gross inefficiencies in the industry. It is not only his bark-but-don’t-bite-response, Ndukwe is usually so defensive of the GSM companies that one often wonders what side he is on? Many would adduce his vested interests in the industry as being responsible for this, citing, for instance, his stakeholding in Cellcom, recently acquired by CEO of Zenith bank, Jim Ovia. As rightly posited during the public hearing organized by the National Asssembly Ad-hoc committee on GSM, there is no justification for the existing operators not to provide Nigerian consumers better quality of service.

A curious dimension to the NCC/NigComSat imbroglio is the bewildering fact that NCC recently granted a company wholly owned by the United Arab Emirate, called Mubadala, a license to operate telecommunication services in Nigeria. Presently, Mubadala is set to launch its communication satellite, Al Yahsat. When one considers that Mubadala is a principal investment vehicle of the Government of Abu-Dhabi with the mandate to generate sustainable economic benefits and achieve superior returns on investment for Abu-Dhabi (in the light of unfavourable prognoses for its oil industry, extrapolated to dry up in years to come), the NCC’s refusal to accord the same privilege to NigComSat, which is not just indigenous but already has the capacity that Mubadala aspires for, reveals that something is indeed gravely amiss. Experience has shown that it is that which is ours that will best take care of our interest, in the way that Globacom’s entry into the market with 2.5G, per second billing, blackberry, price reduction and improved/increased service offerings resulted to the initial (multinational) entrants being forced to follow Globacom and implement what they had all along denied us. Why then will NCC not give to our own NigComSat what it has given the foreign Mubadala, even with its lesser abilities? How unfortunate it is that we would be the ones to undermine our efforts at progress and self development.

NigComSat is a geo-stationary satellite designed to operate in C, Ku, Ka and L bands; built with radiation, hardened technology, high reliability, onboard software, reprogrammable ability, fault tolerance, high efficiency and has centre beams over the African continent. Here is a hybrid communication satellite that can meet current and future needs of Nigeria and Africa, so much so that even before Nigeria joined, on May 13, 2007, the select group of countries with such satellites in orbit, about twenty-four African Heads of State had already signified an intention to subscribe to its potentials, yet one Nigerian is depriving millions of the immense possibilities for economic growth and advancement. Ndukwe should be made to grant the 3G spectrum allocation and Universal Operating License approved for NigComSat. Government will do well to rid itself of people like Ernest Ndukwe.

 

Jide Ayobolu

No. 19 Gongola Street

Garki 2

Abuja