If the statement credited to the Minister of Power, Prof. Barth Nnaji on the near impossibility of having a regular electricity power supply even in the future is taken serious then telecoms operators may have to continue to plough bulk of their earning into power generation.
The reason is that the minister is introducing a plan that would further worsen the condition under which the GSM and CDMA’s are operating.
And indeed, their subscribers may have to continue to suffer from the consequences of poor quality service, caused more often by power failure at base stations. All mobile telephone operators in the country power their base stations with generating sets, not one but two.
Investigations revealed that the operators do maintenance on the generating sets at least twice in a month that is besides unplanned repair, which maybe done those generating sets as break-down occurs.
Recently at a public function, the President of Association of Licensed Telecoms Operators in Nigeria, (ALTON), Engr. Gbenga Adebayo noted that power is a major money gulper for the operators stressing that depending solely on government for electricity power provision to power base stations and switching centre is one risk that the operators cannot take.
According to him, when the base stations goes off, the subscriber would be the first to raise usual alarm of service failure adding that very few subscribers would realise that the fault is not entirely that of the operator.
While explaining further on the essence of electricity power to stable and reliable telecoms services, Adebayo disclosed that bulk of the revenue of the operators go into generating electricity power to run their base stations adding that it is the huge investment that they have made in electricity power generation that is keeping them in business.
It would be recalled that one of the reasons at the wake of the deregulation of the telecoms sector given by foreign investors who were shying away from Nigeria was the issue of the operating environment. The initial complain of the foreign investors was that as a leading economy in Africa, Nigeria was unable to tackle the problem of electricity. And as such was considered an unsafe destination for investment in telecoms.
However, those who brave the odds to make investment in that regard have had to paid dearly for it by making huge investment in electricity power generation unlike what they would have done in other countries of the world.
The statement of the minister, some industry sources said capable of cripplingly the telecoms sector saying that it embracing that 10 years after the deregulation and considering the huge money that government made from them (operators) with none of it ploughed back to develop the power sector, at least for the sake of the telecoms industry.
The source in one of the telecoms company wondered why it is so difficult for government to sacrifice part of the fund that they have made from the operators to give special funding for power in the telecoms sector.
Besides the fact that the statement of the minister is considered a bad omen by some sources in the industry, as it means more years of struggling by the operators to give reliable, efficient and quality services to their subscribers, yet industry leaders have begun criticise some of the decision of the minister.
President Association of Telecommunications Companies of Nigeria (ATCON), Engr Titi Omo-Ettu said that the establishment of Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trading Board is a pointer that all is not well in the energy sector.
The Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trading Board was one of the strategy of the minister tackle the age long electricity power problem in the nation but Omo-Ettu, noted that “The fact that the craftsmen of the reform have identified the need for that board is an admission of dangers the entire concept portends for that all important sector."
According to him, establishing a bureaucracy to solve a problem which needs a private sector orientation and solution is a waste of time and resources saying "How can they be breeding another bureaucracy after the establishment of the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC), which from all readings and inferences does not have a focus as things stand now?".
"They want to use an illegal body to confuse a legal but impotent body. We need private sector initiatives to run in parallel with government bodies if they insist on perpetuating government companies to provide electricity and allow our people have a choice to make."
The ATCON boss stated that “We cannot and should not keep breeding bureaucracies which are fundamentally sluggish and put civil servants in charge of businesses that mean much to our economy.”
He observed that the privatization power generating plants, implies a dash of our commonwealth and also discouragement of private initiatives from providing alternatives that are needed.
Explaining on how best to tackle the power problem, he urged the minister to take clue from the reforms of the telecoms sector stressing that "what we did was to allow the private sector compete with government bureaucracies and you can see that when they killed NITEL, we still had alternatives to fall back on."
Omo-Ettu said that he is worried about the trend of events in the power sector saying that as a stakeholder in the power sector and as a concerned Nigerian, who is part of the long suffering citizenry, the subject matter on power needs to be revisited. And the reason is not far fetch, because its constituency is one of the worst hit.
An analysis of the huge investment made by the telecoms operators showed that over N3.63 billion is invested by the operators monthly on generating power sets. The money is for the powering of about 15,000 cell sites owned by the operators. The money is for the cost of diesel, maintenance and other miscellaneous expenses.
The ALTON boss at a function recently said that the erratic power supply in the country is taking a heavy toll on the operation of member companies of the association saying both the GSM and CDMA operators use an average of 25 million litres of diesel every month.
He said that since their license mandates them provide interrupted services across the country for 24/7 hours, they had to provide alternative sources of power in the absence of power supply from the government owned Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN).
He added that in most communities access to the sites is often difficulty either due to the activities of the community leaders as well as that of the miscreant also known as ‘area boys’.
The implication, of that according to Adebayo is the persistent network failure resulting to poor service delivery, increase operational and capital expenditure as well as and the threat to operational integrity of telecoms networks in the country.
Also, MTN Nigeria had at a seminar on telecoms infrastructure in Lagos revealed that it spent over N12bilion in acquiring generators to provide power for its many base stations nationwide.
He explained that spend N500m monthly on diesel procurement and generator maintenance, adding that it had 7,000 base stations covering 85 per cent of Nigeria’s landmass, which must be constantly powered.
The President, Association of Telecommunications Companies of Nigeria, Mr. Titi Omo-Ettu, had recently said that inadequate power supply posed a serious impediment to Information Communications Technology growth in the country.
“What the telecoms sector needs now is radically improved public power supply. That is an issue the President must address sincerely and genuinely. If the problems of the telecoms sector are weighted, energy takes 70 per cent,” the ATCON boss said.
Omo-Ettu also said that about 45 per cent of the indigenous telecoms licensees, who commenced business when the telecoms industry was liberalised in 1993, had collapsed now due to the harsh economic environment, with inadequate power supply being a major problem.
“Unknown to the public, 40 per cent of telecoms licensees, who commenced business at the turn of liberalisation in 1993, had shut up shop because of erratic power supply,” he said.
He noted that many of the affected companies were Internet Service Providers, adding that erratic power supply could limit future ICT growth in the country if nothing was done to reverse the ugly trend.
To solve the protracted power supply crisis in the country, Omo-Ettu called on the Federal Government to urgently and sincerely liberalise the energy sector.
Since help seems not to have been coming from the government, some of the operators have fashioned out ways to help themselves.
One of such method is the introduction of co-location of base stations which has helped to cut down cost for the operators. For instance there are co-location agreement between MTN and Etisalat.
Recently, Airtel Networks Limited, disclosed that it has invested over $600m in the past one year to expand the capacity and enhance the robustness of its network in pursuit of world class Quality of Service (QoS).
The company’s Chief Operating Officer and Executive Director, Mr. Deepak Srivastava, said that the investment was meant to to upgrade 250 diesel powered stations in Nigeria to Green-sites, an initiative designed to enable the company harness solar energy to operate its base stations.
According to him, the Green-Sites would contribute to a considerable reduction of CO2 emissions and prevent network outages associated with inconsistent power supply.
Srivastava regretted that non-availability of regular grid power supply to sites across the country is responsible for over 70 per cent of down time resulting in poor QoS, adding that the Green-Site would go a long way in addressing this critical challenge.
He hinted that the company was exploring other options including a partnership with the World Bank to address the nagging issue of power supply especially to the remote communities.
“Even as we pursue the Green-Site solution”, he revealed “Airtel has in the last six months installed dual generating sets in 200 sites and installed high back up batteries in 600 sites, while noting that an additional high capacity back up batteries and 500 new Generating Sets are to be deployed by March 2012”.
He lamented that in some other countries, operators are concerned with managing customer experience rather than keeping the sites up as is the case in Nigeria, where power outages, fibre cut and community issues have combined to undermine the integrity of the network quality.
Despite these moves, the regulatory body, Nigeria Communications Commission, (NCC) said that it would sanction any operator who failed to deliver quality services to its subscriber.
The slow pace response of the government to tackling the power issue may just be one factor that would easily expose the operators to the stiff sanction of the NCC.
Another consequence according Omo-Ettu the power problem would continue to deny the sector of world-class investors, which has continued to date.
