This is a part 2 of ITPulse assessment of Prof. Umar Danbatta, the Executive Vice Chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) leadership in the last four years. Check out the part 1 here, which was published two days ago.
Telecom Investment 2015-2019
Four years ago, the investment profile of the sector was around $38 billion. But today, it has grown to over $70billion. Despite this, the telecom regulator has admitted the present investment in the sector is inadequate and will continue to pursue policies that would encourage more investment, stressing that Nigeria is one of the fastest growing telecommunications markets in the world.
“The volume of telecom investment in Nigeria is very impressive and indicative of a very fast-growing and resilient sector of the economy. But, we will continue to advocate for more investment, giving that the industry was very capital intensive, with the competition for Foreign Direct Investments becoming fiercer among different nations,” Danbatta said in Lagos during the maiden Nigerian Telecom Leadership Summit (NTLS) 2019 last month.
Checks by ITPulse revealed that about 40 million Nigerians, especially those in the rural and semi-urban areas are yet to be reached with basic infrastructure and services, making the over $70 billion investment in the telecom industry inadequate and therefore committed to attracting more investment in the industry.
Stressing this during the NTLS, Danbatta stated: “The argument for more investments becomes more compelling, given that this industry is very capital intensive, with the competition for Foreign Direct Investments, FDls, becoming fiercer among different nations. In our consultative regulatory process, we consider shared experiences, and shared vision as the best approach to equip us with the tools to continually reposition towards the course of effective regulation.
“As the 4th Industrial Revolution blurs the lines between the physical, biological and digital boundaries, our industry will continue to witness the challenges of investments to match growth and technology evolution dynamics.
“In this age, broadband is of critical importance with its potential to improve the economy of many nations. We may all be aware of the empirical study by the World Bank, which suggests that for every 10 per cent growth in Broadband penetration results in 1.34 per cent in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in developing countries. “This is one of the reasons why we have developed the regulatory and licensing framework to accelerate broadband availability, accessibility and affordability.
“It is therefore by no accident that we have made the facilitation of broadband penetration the flagship of the 8-Point Agenda of our administration. We have put a lot of effort in this direction, including auctions of frequency spectrum in some bands, and re-farming to optimize some. The licensing of InfraCos under the Open Access Model has taken shape.”
Restructuring Telecoms VAS market
Under the watch of the erudite scholar, the Commission has also witnessed a recalibration and repositioning of the sector’s value–added services (VAS) segment, a move that has helped to sanitised the industry. The sub-sector’s current value is estimated at $200 million with potential to grow to over $500 million in the next few years. The tenacity and a sense of regulatory excellence that have practically become the hallmarks of the Commission’s activities have, thus far, resulted in impressive statistics coming out of the industry as at the end of December, 2018.
The industry has also recorded other impressive growth under Danbatta. Apart from broadband, mobile Internet subscribers have also reached over 122.2 million.
In the last four years of Danbatta, mobile voice subscriptions grew from 151 million in August, 2015 to over 174 million by June 2019, with teledensity, which is the number of telephone lines per 100 persons in an area, standing today at 91.17 per cent from 107 per cent as at August, 2015. Today, telecoms contribution to the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is about 10.11 per cent in June, 2019 up from eight per cent four years ago with over 500,000 direct and indirect jobs created by the sector.
Effective consumer protection, empowerment
Perhaps, more profound in the agenda of the Commission is its posture as a consumer-centric organisation. The Commission has intensified efforts at protecting and empowering the consumer by developing new and sustaining existing initiatives in this direction. Some of these initiatives include the introduction of mobile number portability to cushion subscribers’ anxiety of changing networks by purchasing Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) card indiscriminately and the declaration of 2017 as the ‘Year of the Consumer’. Ironically, the Commission has extended its Year of Consumer initiative to persist in 2018 and this is expected to continue into the future. In other words, efforts at implementing the consumer-centric initiatives embarked upon by the Commission have never waned, as it continues to underscore the importance it attaches to the consumer, as critical stakeholders in the telecoms value chain.
It needs to be emphasized that the Commission has, over the years, sustained periodic consumer engagement, on a continuous basis, through its various outreaches such as the Telecoms Consumer Parliament (TCP), the Consumer Outreach Programme (COP), the Consumer Town Hall Meeting (CTM) as well as the Consumer Conversation, among others.
The Commission has also demonstrated unflinching commitment to the consumer is in terms of consumer complaints resolutions. According to NCC report, between January 2017 and December 2018, that the Commission received a total of 118,784 complaints from consumers, of which 92,757, representing 78 percent of total complaints received during the two year period were successfully resolved to the satisfaction of telecom consumers.
The development and introduction of the Do-Not-Disturb (DND) 2442 Short Code has also helped the consumer to control unsolicited text messages, as over 12 million telecoms consumers have activated the DND Short Code either partially or fully. The creation of the Toll-Free Number, 622, as a second-level consumer complaints escalation mechanism has also received accolades from stakeholders in the industry.
Further to its consumer centric regulatory approach, the Commission issued two major regulatory directions in 2018: the direction on data roll-over, which enables consumers to roll over unused data for period of time, ranging from one day to seven days, depending on their data plan; and the direction on forceful subscription of data services and value added services (VAS) which directs service providers to desist from forceful/automatic renewal of data services without prior consent of subscribers.
Fighting call masking to stand-still
In the wake of 2017, the menace of call masking/call refilling and SIM boxing reared their ugly heads and pronto, the Commission took drastic actions towards addressing the issue. Basically, call masking is when inbound international calls terminate in Nigeria as local number. This raises security concerns, competition issue and portends negative economic implications. In fact, it is estimated that globally, call masking is causing economy $60 billion annually.
But, according to Prof. Danbatta, the Commission has taken a number of actions towards curbing the menace of call masking: These include strict compliance monitoring and enforcement by the Commission; imposition of appropriate sanctions by the Commission on licensees involved in call refiling and masking activities; and suspension of numbering plans of some perpetrators and withdrawal of all their inactive numbering plans.
Other measures taken in this regard include the continuous sensitisation of consumers and other industry stakeholders on the dangers of call masking, which is still ongoing; the development and institution of new reporting requirements on interconnecting licensees that makes it easy and seamless to quickly identify perpetrators of call masking and the Proof of Concept (PoC) commenced in July 2018 with the deployment of technology solutions to monitor, report, apprehend and block SIMs being used for SIM boxing activities and prevent SIM lines from being used for call masking activities.
These interventions have generated profound results for the industry. First, call masking (otherwise called call line identity (CLI) spoofing) has since dropped to more than 40 per cent compared to how prevalent it was in January 2018. Also, SIM boxing traffic has been down by about 25 per cent as at September 11, 2 018.
Stay on this page for the last part of this assessment in two days