The Nigerian telecommunications sector: stakes, figures, bottlenecks, threats, key players, critical factors and quality of service.

When it comes to GDP, Nigeria is the number one in Africa with more than 80% of its revenues coming from the oil industry. From about 2% in 2006, the telecommunications vertical in Nigeria has progressively increased its contribution to GDP over recent years to reach about 8% in 2013.

This means, the government has to protect rather than persecute this sector of the economy. However, it is also quite clear that, operators have to respect their commitments.

As part of our global commitment, as a must-attend landmark for the end-to-end digital transformation for the companies and public sectors of all sizes, Connectikpeople.co soon #Retinknow®, has decided to make a focus on the Nigerian telecommunications sector for numerous reasons.

Firstly Nigeria is the biggest economy of the continent, in terms of GDP, demography and business opportunities. Secondly, Nigeria meets political instability, and lack of security.

In this country, mobile operators such as Airtel, Globacom, and MTN have invested large amounts into their networks, but such efforts have often been ineffective due to the lack of:

·        Infrastructure in the country,

·        Widespread and persistent vandalism of fiber cables,

·         theft of diesel generators from cell sites,

·        And destruction of fiber cables destruction during road construction.

 

These outbreaks are the key reasons why the quality of the mobile services they provide has remained so poor until now.

According to Oluwole Babatope a telecommunications and networking research analyst with IDC West Africa , the acquisition of land, together with government taxes, informal levies from various 'community youth organizations', and the high cost of generating power, all demand huge capital and operational investments from telecom operators in the country.

Connectikpeople.co soon #Retinknow®, also observes that, the supply of public electricity is unreliable. This means operators need to invest in Hybrid power solutions, which can combine renewable and non-renewable energy sources.

The goal with this approach is to reduce operational expenditure on networks, thereby enabling the operators to invest more in their networks across the country and

ultimately improve the customer experience.