Operators worried over Lagos base stations ban
Nigeria‘s Telecommunications industry may be heading for another controversy following moves by the Lagos State Government to withhold approvals to operators who wish to build new base stations.
Announcing the decision, the General Manager of the Lagos State Infrastructure Management and Regulatory Agency, Mr. Joe Igbokwe, said it was based on the need to protect people‘s lives and the environment.
He said that the 2,000 odd base stations already existed in the state were enough, bearing in mind that issues had been raised concerning the possible negative impact of mobile telecommunications infrastructure and terminals on people‘s health.
Subscribers may be the ones to suffer the impact of this move as already exemplified in Abuja, where attempts by the Federal Capital Territory Administration to force operators to install their infrastructure based on its own terms backfired. This led to the suspension of expansion work on telecommunication infrastructure in the city for close to two years and the quality of services was badly affected.
This is now the issue raised by the Association of Licensed Telecom Operators of Nigeria, which, in reaction to the Lagos State Government‘s decision said that if the state‘s current plans were allowed to be carried through, they could lead to increased cost of operations and subsequent tariff increase.
Chairman of the ALTON, Mr. Gbenga Adebayo, said the announcement by the Lagos Government amounted to yet another method to impose a regulatory oversight on telecommunications services when it did not have such powers. He said he expected the state government to have dialogued with operators so that a joint decision would have been taken on the matter rather than the current approach that simply handed down instructions to them without their input.
However, with the matter of possible tariff increase being mentioned, a telecom subscriber pressure group, the National Association of Telecom Subscribers of Nigeria has issued a warning to operators.
According to President of the NATCOMMS, Chief Deolu Ogunbanjo, subscribers were ready to resist the attempted tariff increase noting that users had already become overburdened by operators‘ high tariff.
He said, ”We will like to seriously warn the telecom service providers that they should not take the resilience of their subscribers as a liberty to entrench economic slavery. That their current tariff regime constitutes economic adversities to the economic well being of their subscribers is bad enough. And any further increase will create many damaging and unpalatable consequences.”
He advised operators to enforce their court judgment if they had any rather than subjecting users to the current troubles.
He said, ”The excuse of multiple taxation does not hold water, because, if truly the operators have a favourable Federal High Court judgment forbidding multiple taxation as argued in the said publication, the logical thing to do is to enforce the judgment against the erring governmental authorities and not to shift the needless burden to their already over-burdened subscribers who groan under the yoke of excessive tariff and unmitigated poor services.
Commenting on the threat by NATCOMMS, Adebayo said the group misinterpreted its statements and intentions, noting that the intention of ALTON was to ensure that the move by Lagos State Government was seen as it is -illegal. He said that operators were not threatening a tariff increase but were only crying out about what Lagos was planning to do.
According to him, rather than blame operators for impending negative impact of the decision by the Lagos State Government, telecom groups such as NATCOMMS should join forces with operators and appeal to the governmental to thread softly on the matter.
He said if Lagos carried out its threat, the gradually improving quality of service could be affected negatively.
”If the current capacity improvement works being carried by operators in Lagos is delayed even for a day, the impact on services could become very negative. This is why government must reconsider its decision which is against a subsisting court judgement,” he said.
Besides, the decision not to grant further approvals for new base stations and cell sites, Igbokwe advised operators to explore the option of collocation and infrastructure sharing to keep up with service quality needs and subscribers expectations.
He said, ”I want to charge our mega telecom providers to start considering the idea of collocation which I am told is the in-thing in the other mega cities of the world. Lagos can therefore not be an exception”.
This, according to him, means a situation where a tower meets the needs of a number of companies operating within a particular locality.
According to him, replication of installation will be checked and operating costs spread among companies. Hence, he added that a low-tariff desire of consumers would be achieved; a situation he said, was another concern of the agency
Adebayo noted that there were limitations to collocation from the engineering and operators network perspectives. He said with the spate of licences awarded by the Nigerian Communications Commission, limiting base stations could become almost impossible for government to achieve as new operators need to also meet their licensing obligations and provide service to subscribers.
Announcing the decision, the General Manager of the Lagos State Infrastructure Management and Regulatory Agency, Mr. Joe Igbokwe, said it was based on the need to protect people‘s lives and the environment.
He said that the 2,000 odd base stations already existed in the state were enough, bearing in mind that issues had been raised concerning the possible negative impact of mobile telecommunications infrastructure and terminals on people‘s health.
Subscribers may be the ones to suffer the impact of this move as already exemplified in Abuja, where attempts by the Federal Capital Territory Administration to force operators to install their infrastructure based on its own terms backfired. This led to the suspension of expansion work on telecommunication infrastructure in the city for close to two years and the quality of services was badly affected.
This is now the issue raised by the Association of Licensed Telecom Operators of Nigeria, which, in reaction to the Lagos State Government‘s decision said that if the state‘s current plans were allowed to be carried through, they could lead to increased cost of operations and subsequent tariff increase.
Chairman of the ALTON, Mr. Gbenga Adebayo, said the announcement by the Lagos Government amounted to yet another method to impose a regulatory oversight on telecommunications services when it did not have such powers. He said he expected the state government to have dialogued with operators so that a joint decision would have been taken on the matter rather than the current approach that simply handed down instructions to them without their input.
However, with the matter of possible tariff increase being mentioned, a telecom subscriber pressure group, the National Association of Telecom Subscribers of Nigeria has issued a warning to operators.
According to President of the NATCOMMS, Chief Deolu Ogunbanjo, subscribers were ready to resist the attempted tariff increase noting that users had already become overburdened by operators‘ high tariff.
He said, ”We will like to seriously warn the telecom service providers that they should not take the resilience of their subscribers as a liberty to entrench economic slavery. That their current tariff regime constitutes economic adversities to the economic well being of their subscribers is bad enough. And any further increase will create many damaging and unpalatable consequences.”
He advised operators to enforce their court judgment if they had any rather than subjecting users to the current troubles.
He said, ”The excuse of multiple taxation does not hold water, because, if truly the operators have a favourable Federal High Court judgment forbidding multiple taxation as argued in the said publication, the logical thing to do is to enforce the judgment against the erring governmental authorities and not to shift the needless burden to their already over-burdened subscribers who groan under the yoke of excessive tariff and unmitigated poor services.
Commenting on the threat by NATCOMMS, Adebayo said the group misinterpreted its statements and intentions, noting that the intention of ALTON was to ensure that the move by Lagos State Government was seen as it is -illegal. He said that operators were not threatening a tariff increase but were only crying out about what Lagos was planning to do.
According to him, rather than blame operators for impending negative impact of the decision by the Lagos State Government, telecom groups such as NATCOMMS should join forces with operators and appeal to the governmental to thread softly on the matter.
He said if Lagos carried out its threat, the gradually improving quality of service could be affected negatively.
”If the current capacity improvement works being carried by operators in Lagos is delayed even for a day, the impact on services could become very negative. This is why government must reconsider its decision which is against a subsisting court judgement,” he said.
Besides, the decision not to grant further approvals for new base stations and cell sites, Igbokwe advised operators to explore the option of collocation and infrastructure sharing to keep up with service quality needs and subscribers expectations.
He said, ”I want to charge our mega telecom providers to start considering the idea of collocation which I am told is the in-thing in the other mega cities of the world. Lagos can therefore not be an exception”.
This, according to him, means a situation where a tower meets the needs of a number of companies operating within a particular locality.
According to him, replication of installation will be checked and operating costs spread among companies. Hence, he added that a low-tariff desire of consumers would be achieved; a situation he said, was another concern of the agency
Adebayo noted that there were limitations to collocation from the engineering and operators network perspectives. He said with the spate of licences awarded by the Nigerian Communications Commission, limiting base stations could become almost impossible for government to achieve as new operators need to also meet their licensing obligations and provide service to subscribers.
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