Abuja — Within the last eight years, telecom investments in Nigeria have exceeded, the $18 billion mark "on account of a predictive regulatory environment and supportive government for a deregulated telecom industry."

A statement made available to THISDAY by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) said the chief executive of the Commission, Engr. Ernest Ndukwe, disclosed this at the ongoing ITU World 2009 Forum and Exhibition in Geneva, Switzerland.

According to the statement, the country is keen on attracting more investments so as to expand the needed services in the areas of Internet and broadband services across the country, having made a remarkable inroad into voice telephony services."

It quoted Ndukwe as saying that the current investment figure was made up of about US$12 billon from foreign direct investments while the balance was from investments made from and within the country since 2001.

According to him, the Federal Government's invitation to the private sector for participation in the industry has paid handsomely and led to the current success indices in the sector. "This tells me that the decision by government to liberalise was a very good one," he said, indicating that this was why the current 68 million active subscriber lines recorded in the industry over just eight years in Nigeria have been variously described as a revolution.

Ndukwe said that the decision by Nigeria to implement a technologically neutral regulation has resulted in investments in both the GSM and CDMA based services and made diverse services available in Nigeria with investors attacking services from different points thereby providing choices for the Nigerian consumer.

The statement stated that Ndukwe also told the world that Nigeria is shifting regulatory emphasis from licensing operators to monitoring and improving quality of services and attending to the needs of the consumer. Henceforth, issues of quality of service and affordability, and the like are becoming the focus of the regulator in line with the dynamics of the market and we are trying to refocus on this in terms of structural repositioning of the regulator to deliver within the dictates of these dynamicsî, he said.