TELECOMS SECTOR IN NIGERIA

Once upon a time, the telecoms sector was NITEL. NITEL bestrode the land like a colossus. NITEL technicians held the ace. If they do not play ball, you have nowhere to appeal to. You needed connections to get a landline after paying all your connection fees. Your file needed assistance to move from table to table. By the time your line is approved, phase II of the struggle commences, that of actually getting connected. David Mark, now Senate President was once quoted to have said as Communications Minister that telephones are not for the poor. The moment you have a telephone, you are no longer poor. The press took him to the cleaners. To be honest, as at the time he purportedly made that statement, it was the reality of the day. You needed tons of money and connections in high places to get a NITEL line. You needed to prostrate to NITEL employees to get attention.

Competition eventually came in trickles. There was the Thuraya satellite phone, then the PTOs EMIS and Multilinks. Telephone was still not for the poor. You needed to fork out about one hundred and sixty thousand naira to get on the Multilinks network in 1998/99. EMIS was about ten thousand naira cheaper. With the advent of the telecoms revolution of 2001, telephone inched closer to the poor. SIM cards went for as high as forty thousand naira as the operators ripped off a grateful nation. MTN and the then Econet was the only option then, while NITEL was long on promises and short on roll out. MTN staff became the new lords of the manor. You either take it or leave it. Complaints of poor quality of service, demand for lower tariffs and per second billing fell on deaf ears. You had to pay fifty naira per minute to call customer service to listen to instrumental music while you were placed on hold. Econet was more people friendly, but seemed to have challenges putting its act together. It went from Econet to Vodacom to Vmobile to Celtel, and at the time of going to press, Zain. While Econet was busy branding and rebranding, MTN became a virtual monopoly by virtue of the spread of their network as quality of service and customer service went from bad to worse.

Then came Glo, and things have never been the same again. MTN had finally met an equal. Glo came with guns blazing; per second billing, lower tariffs, better quality of service and people friendly customer service. MTN had to scramble back to the drawing board to avoid being blown out of water. Per second billing suddenly became possible, calling customer service became free and tariffs went south. Etisalat has since joined the fray. With stiff competition, coupled with the fact that an average Nigerian has two mobile phones with a spare SIM card, migrating from one network to another is truly seamless. All you need to do is pluck out the SIM of the offending network, and you are back in business. SIM cards are now virtually free, and recharge card denominations come as low as hundred naira. With the entry of Starcomms, fixed lines became more affordable and Multilinks had no choice but to follow suit.

Internet services are now more readily available, but the speed of dial ups still belong to the stone age. ISP, especially PTOs that offer internet services welcome you with fast speed, and after a month’s honeymoon, you are moved to the popular side where you struggle for bandwidth with hundreds of thousands. To log into your inbox to check your mail can take two hours in some instances.

The stiff competition in the telecoms sector has stepped up the game, but has not had much impact on quality of service and customer service of existing operators. Nigeria is no way near world class in this aspect. In this day and age, Nigerian telecom operators have not deemed it fit to maintain a 24-hour customer care line. Customers have to wait for “opening” hours to be attended to. Some processes are still manual.