The Problems of Insfrastructure In The Telecoms Industry-Nigeria
Well it is not news again to know that Nigeria is Africa’s largest telecoms market right now, with about 67m subscribers at the close of second quarter of 2009, it has clearly overtaking South Africa. Yet the penetration still hovers around 45%.
This is industry is therefore very important not only to the average man on the streets but also for the government in terms of revenue generation and employment creation.
What is doubtful however is the percentage of this revenue is generated that stays in the country as well as the percentage and value of jobs created that benefits Nigerians directly.
There is an obvious infrastructure decay in the Nigeria Space, whether you are talking about roads, power generation, transportation system and the basic infrastructure upon which the telecoms industry rides on like backbone, towers etc . These things are not just there and it appears there is no clear road map that the government is following to provide them.
Today I will like to examine the issue of telecoms towers in Nigeria, the good, the bad and the ugly.
Where ever you go in our cities and outskirts, from Lagos to Maiduguri and from Sokoto to PH, this masks dots the landscape in such a menacing manner that one wonders whether wireless telecoms is a Nigerian. The haphazard way they litter and deface the landscape is worrisome and very embarrassing.
It is estimated that there are about 15,000 telecoms mask in the country and that 120 mask springs up each month. Amazing! The point is that one day we will all wake up and have our houses taking over by a nearby mask of some sort.
What are the good sides?
Each site brings with it direct employment for the guards (at least three per site) and with every ten sites, a new maintenance team gets employment which invariably means employment for a driver and at least one or two Telecoms Engineer.
The diesel sales go up and the generator technicians get going as the generators have to be serviced every 200 hours.
To the Operator, a new site means at least a thousand more customers (within the next 6 -8 months) with an Average Revenue per user per month of at least a Thousand Naira (conservatively) . So a medium sized site could be adding up a Million Naira to the Top line of the Service Provider.
The bad side
We simply have no clear regulation as to the ways and manners this sites spring up even close to residential neighborhoods.
The are defacing the landscape and something has to be done and that quickly too
Most of these towers have no aviation lights on them and you can imagine the hazards they pose to air travelers
The ugly side
The real ugly site is the loss of revenue that the importations of these towers constitute to the Nigerian tax payer. Is this not another kind of capital flight? Can the government make concerted effort to reduce what we import in terms of telecoms infrastructure by some kind of participation in manufacturing the need components for this all important industry in Nigeria which most probably is the second most employer of labour outside agriculture in Nigeria.
Just take a closer look at our imports
Handsets
Galvanized steel parts for Towers
Switching gears
Cables
Common tools.
Fiber optic cables and its housing, and the list goes on.
Just name it every thing is imported. I am not an economist but in my next blog I will try to compute the loss as a result of these imports, some of which can be manufactured in Nigeria.
This is industry is therefore very important not only to the average man on the streets but also for the government in terms of revenue generation and employment creation.
What is doubtful however is the percentage of this revenue is generated that stays in the country as well as the percentage and value of jobs created that benefits Nigerians directly.
There is an obvious infrastructure decay in the Nigeria Space, whether you are talking about roads, power generation, transportation system and the basic infrastructure upon which the telecoms industry rides on like backbone, towers etc . These things are not just there and it appears there is no clear road map that the government is following to provide them.
Today I will like to examine the issue of telecoms towers in Nigeria, the good, the bad and the ugly.
Where ever you go in our cities and outskirts, from Lagos to Maiduguri and from Sokoto to PH, this masks dots the landscape in such a menacing manner that one wonders whether wireless telecoms is a Nigerian. The haphazard way they litter and deface the landscape is worrisome and very embarrassing.
It is estimated that there are about 15,000 telecoms mask in the country and that 120 mask springs up each month. Amazing! The point is that one day we will all wake up and have our houses taking over by a nearby mask of some sort.
What are the good sides?
Each site brings with it direct employment for the guards (at least three per site) and with every ten sites, a new maintenance team gets employment which invariably means employment for a driver and at least one or two Telecoms Engineer.
The diesel sales go up and the generator technicians get going as the generators have to be serviced every 200 hours.
To the Operator, a new site means at least a thousand more customers (within the next 6 -8 months) with an Average Revenue per user per month of at least a Thousand Naira (conservatively) . So a medium sized site could be adding up a Million Naira to the Top line of the Service Provider.
The bad side
We simply have no clear regulation as to the ways and manners this sites spring up even close to residential neighborhoods.
The are defacing the landscape and something has to be done and that quickly too
Most of these towers have no aviation lights on them and you can imagine the hazards they pose to air travelers
The ugly side
The real ugly site is the loss of revenue that the importations of these towers constitute to the Nigerian tax payer. Is this not another kind of capital flight? Can the government make concerted effort to reduce what we import in terms of telecoms infrastructure by some kind of participation in manufacturing the need components for this all important industry in Nigeria which most probably is the second most employer of labour outside agriculture in Nigeria.
Just take a closer look at our imports
Handsets
Galvanized steel parts for Towers
Switching gears
Cables
Common tools.
Fiber optic cables and its housing, and the list goes on.
Just name it every thing is imported. I am not an economist but in my next blog I will try to compute the loss as a result of these imports, some of which can be manufactured in Nigeria.
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