A telecommunications enthusiast, Mr. Ikechukwu Nnamani has again, called on the federal government to set up a telecom industry financing bank that understands the industry and will be able to provide the right mix of financing, which will ultimately ameliorate some of the challenges of the industry.
Ikechukwu, who is also the Chief Executive Officer of Medallion Communications Limited and First Vice President of the Association of Telecommunications Companies of Nigeria (ATCON), made the call last week during a high-powered virtual meeting, organized by ATCON to discuss the socio-economic and political impact of Covid-19 on telecom and ICT sector in Nigeria.
According to him, Covid-19 has shown that Nigeria depends largely on the telecom industry to survive. Ironically, the industry has struggled to get the right financing to build and expand infrastructures across the country.
“The time has come for Nigeria to set up a telecom industry Bank just as we have Bank of Industry, Bank of Agriculture and others. We need a bank that understands ICT and telecom services to be able to provide the right mix of financing for the industry,” he advocated.
He argued that most of the government’s post-Covid-19 initiatives are geared toward the public sector, leaving the private sector, which provides a large percentage of the initiatives and services unattended to. This has led to the inability to build and expand the network across the country.
“There is an urgent need to look at the financing need of the telecom industry. I will suggest that we should prioritize the conversation here and outside here on how to set up a financial instrument that is best suited for our environment, which will be able to take of the infrastructure expansion needs of the telecom industry,” he advised further.
Meanwhile, the Medallion CEO has also expressed worry about the traffic pattern and trend in Nigeria, saying that there is a disconnect about how traffic is distributed in the country. He warned that if the industry is not mindful, Nigeria may not see the results of a lot of the efforts being put in terms of investment.
He said, for instance, about 80 percent of the content in Nigeria resides outside of Lagos, but the network infrastructure is largely deployed in Lagos, which is just 10 percent of Nigeria, leaving other parts of the country unattended to. This, according to him will continue to impact the quality of service and content delivery to the subscribers if the networks are not redesigned to be mindful of the traffic pattern.
Ikechukwu disclosed that Medallion Communications Limited, touted as Nigeria’s Telehouse is taking care of over 80 percent of the local Internet exchange traffic through its Data Centers in Lagos. He also believes that Medallion cannot do it alone. Rather, the government through the regulator must encourage investors to set up Data Center infrastructure in other parts of the country, if the fundamental of ICT infrastructure in Nigeria must grow exponentially.
Medallion Data Centers are today the most connected facilities in West Africa. It is the region’s number one peering point connecting the sub-region to the rest of the world. Medallions currently have above 90 service providers as its customer.
Medallion hosts the Nigerian Internet Exchange, The Nigeria .ng domain servers, all international submarine fibers, all long-distance service providers in Nigeria, all GSM, CDMA, Fixed Line, and Fixed Wireless service providers, Value Added Service Providers and Premium Rated Service Providers like Google, Facebook, Orange, Sparkle amongst others.