Special Report by Remmy Nweke
August 2007 marked the six years of telecommunications revolution in the annals of Nigeria, which began with the introduction of the Digital Mobile Communications services universally known as the Global System for Mobile (GSM) communications in the country.
There was no gain saying that before then, access to telephone was the exclusive preserve of the rich and privileged few in our society.
Today, the revolution called GSM phones beep in almost every palm, pocket, handbag, office, party, school hostel, beer parlour, newsroom to name a few.
Listening to the numerous ringing tones from different GSM phones when an aircraft comes to a halt and the engines turned off, elicits a kind of excitement among Nigerians. These and many more are happening within a short space of six years, thus prompting some people to have forget so easily where the nation is coming from telecommunications-wise and what it was like to communicate prior to the advent of GSM.
May be a little background could do. Noteworthy is that preceding year 2001, the number of available connected telephone lines in the country was estimated at a mere 450,000 for an estimated population of over 120 million then and the level of investment in the telecommunications sector was just about $50 million.
And now six years after, precisely since August 2001 when the first call was reportedly made on GSM networks in the country tremendous growth has been recorded in the telecommunications sector and has remained unmatched by any other sector both in subscriber-base and infrastructural development.
In the beginning … :
Few months after mounting the saddle of leadership at the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), the Executive Vice Chairman, Dr. Ernest Chukwuka-Anene Ndukwe with the support of the NCC board led by its chairman, Alhaji Ahmed Joda (OFR) and Federal Government announced the readiness of the commission to auction the first Digital Mobile Licence (DML) in January 2001.
Although other countries of the world may have GSM roll out, the methodology of NCC auction of the licenses drew global applause because of its transparency, hence it was an added value from a country just emerging from military rule, and merely three years into the new phase of life called democracy.
This singular auction acclaimed both locally and internationally became a key to the communications revolution that paved the way for what have been attested as high level of transparency associated with the exercise.
The operators emerged:
However, the auction paved the way for the emergence of three GSM operators in the country, namely the ECONET Wireless now CELTEL Nigeria, MTN Nigeria and MTEL, a subsidiary of then incumbent operator, the Nigerian Telecommunications Limited (NITEL), which was also awarded an operating licence as the first National Carrier.
By the year 2002 the fourth GSM operator emerged in the name of Globacom trading under the name Glomobile, yet via another transparent auction procedure, which was bundled in the Globacom’s Second National Operator (SNO) license package.
Following the expiration of the five year exclusivity of the initial DML and to further ensure competition, a fifth mobile license with GSM spectrum was recently awarded to the Emerging Market Telecommunications Services Limited, in the first quarter of this year.
Transparency as hallmark:
There is no doubt that the initial transparent manner exhibited by NCC laid the foundation on how the other licensing auctions now followed, including that of the Second National Operator (SNO) granted to Globacom, Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) licences approved for 24 companies on regional basis, the Unified Access Service Licences (UASL) currently awarded to over 10 telcos, Third Generation (3G) Licences granted to four companies.
With these cards on the table, NCC gave birth to what industry experts refer to as phenomenal growth of telephone lines in the country by boosting teledensity from 0.4 to 24 in less than a decade, that is, from estimated 450,000 linked lines as at May 1999 to over 38 million lines by end of July 2007.
This is not to say that there are still not great number of areas that are untapped in the country while discussing teledensity, which may have prompted the commission to stress the need for the Public-Private-Partnership (PPP) in taking telephony to the rural areas.
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