Prince Osuagwu
1 October 2007
Lagos — Against the backdrop of continued complaints on quality of services (QoS) by telecom operators in the country, the National Assembly may soon look into the available telecom regulations with a view to overhauling them to suit a people oriented regulatory provisions.
Senate President, David Mark, stated this in Lagos last week at a two day workshop organised by one of Nigeria's top flight ICT Magazines, IT World to discuss developments in telecoms, internet, computer and courier businesses.
The event was tagged Afritecc 2007. Senator Mark, said the document review was in line with the constitutional provisions given the Senate power of "investigation, evidence and legislative oversight" of the administration generally.
According to Mark, the Senate and indeed the National Assembly will embark on a systemic overhaul of the present legal and regulatory framework of the industry to make policies and programmes implementation relevant to the people and align with government intentions.
He noted that the overall objective of the process would be to ensure better "regulatory mechanism, international best practices, better legislation, expansion of telephony, technology transfer, development of indigenous technology, increased local content," among other things.
Senator Mark, who was represented by Barr. Davidson Oputeh, at the event stated that part of the task of the National Assembly while reviewing the regulations would be to "critically examine some of the enabling laws guiding the operations of our parastatals with a view to reviewing them. We do not, for example, have a Competition Law. The enactment of State Law on Telecommunications in some states and the FCT-Abuja as well as the imposition of multiple levies and taxes on telecoms operators may become distinctive for investment in the sector".
"Get to the root of the remote and immediate causes of foot dragging on the National Rural Telephony Project (NRTP) and critically determine the remote and immediate causes of poor GSM service delivery and high tariff in order to come up with appropriate and effective legislation on the matter".
National Assembly, he said, would also "determine the degree of effectiveness and impact of Universal Service Provision Fund (USPF) in the enhancement of the Universal Access Initiative and the general socio-economic well being of our people especially at the grassroots.
The issue of collocation and infrastructure sharing which has been advised by many stakeholders as a way forward in the industry but seems not to be arresting the interest of the operators, is one of the problems, Mark said would be taken into consideration while reviewing the laws. He said, "we will critically examine the problem of duplication of infrastructure with little optimization.
This is evident from the number of masts and towers dotting the skyline. Apart from the safety and environmental implications, these lead to significant additional costs and higher price of services that could have been avoided through infrastructure sharing, network optimization and co-location of facilities".
The National Assembly said it would also task itself to ensuring that expatriate quota in the telecommunications industries is reduced in order to create jobs for indigenous personnel in order to possibly encourage more competition and reduce the level of monopoly that has created high tariffs and poor service delivery.
It would examine the possibilities of getting GSM service providers listed on the stock market in order to encourage Nigerians to participate in the business and reduce this prevailing enormous capital flight.
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