Abuja — West Africa Telecommunications Regulatory Assembly (WATRA) yesterday stated that the much talked about SAT3 infrastructure was not owned by Nigeria, this was even as the Federal Government reiterated its resolve to privatize the facility.

Executive Secretary of WATRA, Nnamdi Nwokike who spoke at the on going 'First WATRA/ECOWAS Mobile-Roaming and Satellite Workshop' in Abuja explained that the SAT3, a submarine cable that runs from South Africa through West Africa onto Portugal was owned by an international consortium.

Nwokike pointed out that when the SAT3 Infrastructure was being put in place, the different countries and different agencies within the countries that it passed through signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) which has now elapsed.

According to him, the WATRA workshop apart from being an avenue for brainstorming on the issue of Roaming within the West African region would provide an opportunity to discuss or renegotiate on how the SAT3 will be utilized.

"No SAT3 is a submarine cable owned by a consortium that runs from South Africa all the way through West Africa onto Portugal and it is owned by a consortium but at the point when SAT3 was set, different countries and different agencies within those countries that it passed through signed a memorandum of understanding which had ended"

"There is an issue of renegotiating on how the SAT3 will be used and utilized. Would it be an open access, would it still be closed as it is? These are issues we will talk about. It is not owned by any particular country but different countries signed into it and I think at that time Nigeria signed, NITEL was warehousing Nigerian interest in SAT3" Nwokike added.

On the likely outcome of the workshop, Nwokike noted that though lowering of tariff as low as possible was of interest to the gathering, what would be topmost on the agenda was the issue of 'One Network Concept' for the region.

He stated the concept was looking at the possibility of a consumer in the region owning only one SIM card which could be used in any country within the region without having to pay any extra charge as obtainable in the roaming system now.

Ruling out a common telecom regulatory body for the region, Nwokike stated that what WATRA was looking at currently was to see how the ECOWAS protocol can be used to bring together all the regulatory agencies within the region in the area of ensuring that rules in one country was respected in another.

What we want to do is use the ECOWAS protocol to bring all regulators together in terms of making sure that the laws in one country are also respected in another country so that we can have commonality of regulations and rules and that will make it easier for this roaming thing we are talking about, having one network because the rules across the region will be the same. I think having one regulatory body will still take a long time"

The WATRA Executive Secretary used the avenue to disclose that there are moves by different consultants also present at the workshop to push for a parallel submarine cable infrastructure like the SAT3 in the West African sub region, adding that at the end of the conference, West Africa would be better for it.

Also speaking at the workshop, Executive Secretary, Nigerian Communications Commissions (NCC), Ernest Ndukwe said the though the SAT3 facility was already working in Nigeria, the move to privatise it by government was a policy issue inline with the Privatization Act rather than the issue of efficiency or otherwise.

Ndukwe who reiterated that NigComSat has started selling services, bundle services to various stakeholders who are in need of it, explained that "what happened is that Government midwifed the project because of the inability of the stakeholders in the private sector to be able to jump start it in view of the huge amount of money involved

"So at the end of the day, now that it has been midwifed and it would now be privatized you will understand that privatization does not mean that we are losing anything, we are trying to improve the services for the good of Nigerians"

"Even if it is privatised, the new company is not going to say that all those that are already on the network should get out of it, no it would continue because it is an ongoing thing. So the privatization is not an end in itself, government still has a stake in the new company at the end of it all and then the new company will still operate within the rules of the country. It is a project that will be good for Nigeria when it is privately run" he added

Speaking on the workshop and what will be its outcome, the NCC boss noted that the issue of roaming and one-network for the region would help improve commercial activities and social integration of people in the region.