While the telcos burden of managing base stations are being transferred to the tower companies, the need for more base stations has always been there, especially with the poor state of service quality from the operators. It is believed that Nigeria needs to invest a lot more in towers to meet the require capacity for efficient telecom services. As at the end of 2014, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) statistics showed that all the four GSM operators had 30,176, base stations. However, industry experts consider this figure far short of what the country requires with her huge population.
Many stakeholders in the industry have consistently challenged the operators to invest more in base stations to meet the growing demand for quality services in the country.
The immediate past Minister of Communications Technology, Mrs. Omobola Johnson, had for instance, urged operators in the telecommunications sector to increase their respective investments if the country is to overcome the persistent drop in quality of service. The former minister, who made the call against the backdrop of lingering complaints over poor service quality from the telephone companies in the country, had stressed that, the present Transmission Stations (BTS) currently being operated by the telecommunications companies in the country, are inadequate to cater for the need of over 140 million subscribers in the country, stressing that even the clamour for increase in the BTS from its present state to about 60,000, is still relatively small.
The Minister had also noted that the country needs far above 60,000 BTS to solve the perennial issue of poor quality of service. According to her, even Britain with just about 60 million population and about 250 land square meters has about 60,000 BTS delivering services for subscribers in the country, not to talk of Nigeria with an increasing subscribers’ base.
Chairman of the Association of Licensed Telecommunications Operators of Nigeria (ALTON), Gbenga Adebayo, had also stressed that the country has too few base stations given the size of its population. At the end of 2011 there were approximately 20,000 base stations in Nigeria serving a population of more than 150 million people. Adebayo also called on operators to increase this number to around 75,000 in order to meet Quality of Service (QoS) mandates laid down by the regulator.
According to the Chief Executive Officer of IHS, one of the leading tower services companies in the country, Issam Darwish, Nigeria requires at least 50, 000 base stations nationwide in order to guarantee efficient telephone services. The IHS boss said more than 50000 base stations were the only solution to guarantee efficiency of mobile telephone services in the Nigeria. On the investment side, Darwish said more than $12.5 billion was required to build more base stations across the country.
Chief Executive Officer of Internet Solutions, Olusola Teniola, had also cautioned that the telecoms companies needed to put in additional investment in infrastructure such as cell sites to improve service quality for voice and data offerings. According to him, without the injection of fresh investments, the telecoms operators will not be able to meet the needs of their customers in terms of service quality. “We need about 60,000 base stations and increased deployment of technology in microwave segment to improve coverage and extend services to different parts of the country,” Teniola said.
While advocating more investment from the operators, Teniola said 50 per cent additional base station rollout was expected by 2014. With fresh investment in infrastructure rollout, he said the telecoms sector was expected to contribute seven per cent to the country’s Gross Domestic Product by 2013.
Incidentally, the telecom operators are no longer thinking about investing in building more stations. They have found the best option in outsourcing to tower management operators like HTN, IHS and Swap. Good enough, the tower operating companies are responding to the need with more investments, building more base stations and encouraging the telcos to co-locate on them as a reliable third party.
Challenges of BTS Management in Nigeria
Before the resort to co-location and outsourcing, telecom operators in the country have never had it easy building and managing base stations. In fact, it is that part of their business that continually gives many operators sleepless nights, yet it is the most pivotal to services availability. And now that the independent base station managers are taking over, the problems still persist, in fact, the challenges are getting bigger with the new dimension of attacks brought by bombing of base stations in the Northern part of the country.
Destruction of telecom service equipment has become regular occurrence as all telecomm operators in Nigeria have stories to tell in this particular regard and in most cases, base stations are prime target. This particular challenge is estimated to be costing the industry billions of Naira annually and constituting serious hindrances to better quality of service from the operators. According to the umbrella body of telcos in the country, the Association of Licensed Telecommunications Companies of Nigeria (ALTON), it costs about N24, 750,000 to install a single base station together with its tower, special antennas and two generators to power the station. This equipment are like the central nervous systems of communications because they allow subscribers make and receive calls but are now targets of vandals and thieves.
Besides, Multiple Regulation and Taxation are also causing great setback for the industry. Before an operator could set up a cell site, it has to secure approvals from various government agencies and departments under the Federal Government, State Government and Local Government, each of these approvals has fees attached which the operators must pay before taking any action on the site.
Incidentally, all the three tiers of government want to regulate the telecommunications industry and it has further contributed to the bane of telecoms industry. Heavy taxes imposed on telecom companies at the federal, state and local government levels have placed major obstacles, which slows down network expansion thereby compromising quality of service.
ALTON had, on different occasions, noted with serious concern that in the case of telecommunications, it is the federal government that has the exclusive right to regulate the industry which led to the establishment of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) backed with an Act to effectively perform that function. However, events in the recent past suggest that other federal agencies as well as states and local government are now making efforts to usurp NCC’s functions in the telecommunication industry. “It has become a common practice for any government agency be it federal or state to solicit for one levy or the other from operators while some demand that operators secure approvals from them which come with very high fees before they can build infrastructure. The list of taxes and levies from states and local governments include but not limited to planning permit fee, Tenement Rate, Business Premises Registration fee, Effluent Discharge Fee, Environmental Impact Assessment Fee, Advert Rate, Site Analysis Report Fee, etc.,” ALTON had lamented.
Amid all these, the operators still have power problem to contend with. Telecom companies largely depend on stable availability of power to function optimally. The Nigerian power situation has made the telecom operators to depend on alternative power supply to run their Base Transceivers Stations, which is very expensive.
For instance, telecom operators are said to be using an average of twenty five thousand litres of diesel every month to power their base stations. With over 25,000 base stations across the country by all telecommunications operators, there is an average of 50,000 at 2 generators per base station.
The cost of the diesel is not inclusive of the cost of logistics incurred in procuring and transporting the diesel as well as the cost of servicing the generators. Besides, there are places which are not connected to the National Grid, thus requiring 100 per cent generator-powered base stations to provide services to the people in those areas. The adoption of solar and hybrid power in some base stations have not resulted into any significant savings. These have impacted negatively on the operational capacities and increase in operational and capital expenditure of telecom firms in Nigeria with end result of poor quality of service delivery. The over N5 billion spent monthly by operators on power generation could be reinvested in further coverage expansion to address the congestion on the network which resulted to poor quality of service. ALTON has also noted with concern that while the operator’s OPEX (operating expenses) shows 80 per cent for power generation in Nigeria, it is mere 5 per cent in Malawi where power from the grid is stable.
The above are obviously some of the major challenges the operators have been battling with until recently when insecurity problem in the country took a new dimension with the bombing of base stations. Early September last year, major telecom operators’ base stations were hit by deadly bomb attacks by suspected terrorists, disrupting services in Borno, Bauchi, Yobe, Gombe and Kano states. Experts, who described the attacks as detrimental to telecoms growth in the country, said they were suggestive of wilful damage by unscrupulous elements.
This incident re-awakened the call for more security for telecom base stations which were hitherto prone to vandalism and now a subject of terrorists’ attacks. In addition stakeholders in the telecom industry have persistently been calling on the Federal Government of Nigeria to declare telecom infrastructures as Critical National Infrastructure (CNI), to have more protection for them.