Engineer Eugene Juwah, EVC of NCC spoke with ABIMBOLA TOOKI on various issues bothering on the development of telecom industry in Nigeria.
The NCC I met on Ground
WELL, the view that people have about regulatory agency is controlled by the framework and guideline that have been put down for that regulatory agency. The respect that it commands externally is determined by the c                                                                                            ommissioner and the operators of these guidelines that has been put up. If you provide a level playing field, if you are transparent in your dealings with the service providers, these, in the first instance, will primarily be the reason why you are respected.
It doesn’t quite depend on how many conferences you attend or what speeches you give in those conferences, what the international body is looking at is how you carry your regulatory activities. And this is primarily determined by the framework and guidelines that have been established by that regulatory agency. When I came here, I met quite well established framework and guidelines and I am going to act on some of them, but I can tell you that keeping to those guidelines in the spirit of the guidelines and struggling to maintain the terms of the Telecommunications Act that established the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), if I can do all these, then, I think that the respect for NCC will not only be the same but definitely going to be good.
 
Regulatory Dynamism 
We are adding regulations everyday. We are adding guideline, framework, we are doing regulation about things which were not there, doing regulation about quality of service (QoS) which is new, about SIM Card Registration so that criminals using mobile phones will be stopped. We are going to do framework and guideline about broadband deployment for Nigeria. So, there are lot of work, indeed a lot of work and interesting work and I believe collectively they would expand the scope of the guidelines we are talking about.
 
Monitoring and Compliance 
There are serious challenges which you know about. We have done very well in subscription, in teledensity, in penetration, but there are serious issues about committing crime with the mobile phones. These are problems and some of them come from the society, some come because the regulatory agency needs to step up. If I talk about quality of service, it is an area where the regulatory agency has to step up. We need to ensure strict monitoring and compliance, so that the service providers will also sit up in certain areas and provide value for money for their teeming subscribers.
 
Effective Regulation 
Of course, the regulation, the style, the content of the regulator will always change. When the growth started in the telecoms industry, the emphasis was on bringing foreign direct investment (FDI) into the country. To do that at times, you have to be a little bit tough, you have to allow some aspect of pure regulation, but at times regulatory activities are applied in the way of feedback and how the market is behaving.
Now, the industry is bugged by issues of quality of service. It has been there for quite some time, but instead of improving, it is getting worse. So, now it’s time for the regulator to step up and be very firm; otherwise, it will continue to be the trend. The quality will be going down and be bad for everybody, both for the regulator and mostly for the consumers who are paying for the service.
 
Investment and Quality of Service 
Well you know, good quality of service can only come with investment. Proper investment from the service providers is necessary. Investment holds the solution to the issue of quality of service. If there is congestion from the base station, you have to build more, if there is congestion in the transmission line, you have to put higher capacity to those lines, and all these require money. What I am saying is that there seems to have been a flow down of investment in the network in Nigeria. It is an interesting place where people like to talk about the kind of profit service providers are making from the sector.  I am not saying that everybody has, some of them have, but as the subscriber numbers increase, you have the operators making some investments so that they would be able to provide good quality of service and charge affordable prices for their services.
The duty of a regulator is always that while providing a level playing field, you also try to satisfy the demand of the subscribers. You can never look away from the value the subscribers are getting. There is a scope to develop a form of regulatory measures where investment by a particular operator is visible and this can be matched to the number of subscribers they are carrying on their network. For example, you can not carry 10 million subscribers on 1,000 base stations, it is impossible. So, there are ways to measure the capacity of base stations vis-à-vis the numbers of subscribers you have.
This can be reduced to money term. If you have 50 base stations but are supposed to have 100 base stations, you have to add 50, and that is new investment. I think the regulator can devise the means of actually determining the amount you have to invest in order to determine whether you are going in tune with the required investment.
This can actually be done and regulated. So, these are new areas we have to look at because of the peculiar problem we have. There are problems of infrastructure, but you know when operators feel that this can always be an excuse for them so that they can always get away with it; we must be going forward to look at regulatory account so that certain level of investment must be maintained on the network.
 
Our Mandate 
The law permits us to regulate the industry. It permits us to make sure they keep to the terms of their licences. It permits us to make sure subscribers get value for their money. The law doesn’t prescribe adequately that you must provide 20 base stations for 40 subscribers or like that. But it is the spirit of the law and the spirit of our mandate that we must do those things I have mentioned and the way and manner we do it has to be in consultation with the stakeholders.  
We must always invite them and tell them what we want to do, debate what we want to do, listen to feedback and also the problem they have. But on the long run, we as regulator will make a regulation which principally most people are expecting. We want to ensure that our regulatory activities are transparent and when you do that you are going to be respected. The operators themselves have operated in other parts of the world, they know their rights, you cannot just come and impose things on them. If you are seen to be transparent in your regulatory activities, they will respect you.
I can tell you that issue of power has disappeared since I came. I have worked in the telecom company myself. I do understand the business too. The operators are ashamed of the quality of service and right now they are acting seriously to see how they improve on what they presently are offering. What is needed is for the operators to be firm and steadfast. I am sure you have read that MTN is investing $1 billion in its network, Etisalat is investing, Airtel and Glo are doing the same too. And with constant monitoring and enforcement, I have every confidence that this problem of quality of service will be over very soon. It involves investment, serious construction, laying down new infrastructure but I hope that in the medium term, I mean months, we would see a significant improvement.

The Faye of Smaller Operators 
We are here to maintain a fair competition. To be dominant is not bad; it is the action you do when you are a dominant operator that can be bad for you. We haven’t found any dominant operator yet, but any operator who wants to enter the market knows what the market place is like. If you want to enter the market place, you must be prepared to compete. NCC is not going to change the rules so that small operators would have considerable advantage over the big ones.
One of the primary reasons why you have a regulator is that you must have universal service. I mean you don’t have to carry four phones. If you carry one phone, you can make call anywhere you are. What NCC has done in the past is that there were issues of interconnection with smaller operators. It set up interconnection brokers and NCC has been able to make a direction where certain percentage of traffic from the service providers must pass through these interconnect clearing houses. And in the past, it wasn’t enforced and we have started enforcing that. It is important that small operators are not squeezed out by big operators. This is one of the primary roles of a regulator, create a level playing field that satisfies everybody. We ensure that dominant operators don’t refuse smaller operators interconnection as that would help stabilise the market.
 
Broadband Development 
The issue of broadband is very important to Nigeria. It has an impact on learning ability of our children. It has a serious impact on our productivity as a nation, on our competitiveness. It is something that would not be left for the operators alone. Broadband requires substantial investment; at times it is not very profitable initially and in emerging markets like Nigeria. This is why the operators are reluctant because its profitability is not clear. Businessmen always go for something that is profitable, so that it is not quite surprising that we haven’t seen great impact of broadband. Of course, broadband can be implemented in a number of ways, through wireless, fibre and so on.
NCC has licensed frequency for wireless broadband. It has licensed 3.5 frequency and there is also the 2.3 licences, but somehow this has not made the desired impact. Issue of right of way, for example, has been a big stumbling block to wireline broadband. So, having looked at it and knowing the importance of broadband to our economy and to knowledge in Nigeria, the NCC has decided to play a lead role. I always tell the story of the 12 years old boy in America that I met who have learnt so much only through iPad, almost like a university student. It was made possible by broadband.
So having said this, NCC is trying to create the environment to enhance the deployment of broadband infrastructure in the country. We are currently looking at various models of deployment with our consultants and it is also in our budget right now. We intend that within this budgetary period, we are going to intervene in broadband in a significant way.

Sim Registration Exercise 
On the SIM card registration, we have started since Monday, 28th March, 2011, and the vendors are ready. They are keeping the infrastructure, they are deploying to the fields, and tend to complete the exercise within six months and we believe that within this period, anybody who is not registered doesn’t want to register and he or she will be switched off.
And finally about GDP, telecommunication has contributed to Nigeria’s GDP. In 2009, it contributed about 3.5 of Nigerian GDP. In fact, in 2010, it was on record that telecommunication has overtaken the banking sector in contribution to the GDP.
Telecommunication has greatly contributed substantially to employment and to growth of business. It has been a great multiplier effects to other areas. It has significantly trained Nigerian in engineering, business and many other areas. It has created jobs, businesses, it has added value to almost everything. The telecom industry is one key sector of the economy that government must support.