Highway Africa News Agency (Grahamstown)
Remmy Nweke
21 August 2007
Lagos — The future of telecommunications evolution in Nigeria is on the Value Added Services (VAS), says the Chairman, of the Association of Licensed Telecommunications Operators of Nigeria (ALTON), Mr. Gbenga Adebayo.
In exclusive chat with Highway Africa News Agency (HANA), while reviewing the six years of Global System for Mobile communications (GSM) in Nigeria, Mr. Adebayo said Nigeria has taken a place of price in the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) development across Africa and a mark in the world.
He also said that the next step of this development now is to optimise the Value Added Services (VAS) in order to bring more offerings to telecom subscribers.
"We are now going to a future of Value added services, where telecommunications will provide a platform for social services," he declared.
He added that some of the VAS expected to be introduced commercially include eBanking, eLearning, eSecurity, eMotoring, eRoad Traffic, eCommerce all riding on the infrastructure of telecoms.
"The economy and social life of our nation will benefit from these in the next level of development," he asserted.
On the other hand, Adebayo does not expect much rural diffusion in terms of telecoms infrastructure rollout due to lack of incentive to drive such investment by the government so as to make rural areas more attractive.
"I do not foresee much of rural penetration because not much has been done by government to provide incentives in making those areas attractive to commercial network operators," ALTON chairman said.
He further advised the government to quickly readdress the rural telephony project by providing the right incentives for operators to go into those areas, instead of trying to execute the project by itself, which he noted is against the spirit of deregulation.
Mr. Adebayo also commended the industry regulator, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), pointing out that the commission led by Dr. Ernest Ndukwe has so far done well, just as he traced the rapid growth in the industry to the right regulatory environment.
"If regulation was a problem, the world players will not be so interested in Nigeria, but today, the world of telecoms, from vendors to operators is looking towards Nigeria," he said.
While expressing optimism that the future of telecoms is bright in Nigeria, he said it's not yet time to celebrate. "Because we still have relatively large addressable markets, and the government and public must do a lot more to protect telecom infrastructure and support the operators," Mr. Adebayo said.
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