Godfrey Ikhemuemhe
Hi

With additional transmission capacity soon to come from Long Distance Carriers just introduced into the Nigerian telecommunications terrain, Nigeria may be on the road to witnessing sufficient transmission capacity in the months ahead. Thanks to the fore sight of the Nigeria Communications Commission.

In 2002, the Nigerian Communications Commission licensed two companies to provide long distance transmission in addition to NITEL, the hitherto sole National Carrier. The companies are Globacom which is actually the second National Carrier, SNO, and MTS which has a cocktail of licences in addition to its LDC licence.

This action of the NCC has seen to the deployment of additional transmission capacity from these two companies in addition to the first National Carrier, NITEL.

This situation becomes very significant to the telecommunications industry in Nigeria because when the phone explosion happened in Nigeria some three years ago, the lack of telecommunications infrastructure to handle the explosion was obvious. The most common of the problems was that calls could not be passed across and even within networks. Calls could also hardly be passed between one part of the country and another.

The main problem was the lack of transmission capacity to handle the high volume of calls generated by the new GSM companies.

Hitherto, the National Carrier (NITEL) could make do with the transmission capacity available to it and some few PTOs which were operating in the country then. All the active telephone lines put together at that time, were about 500,000.

But with the advent of GSM which threw up traffic double the afore-mentioned capacity in less than six months, the country’s handicap in the area of transmission infrastructure became obvious. Calls generated by the GSM companies could hardly go through, exposing the reality that the path to efficient telecommunications service which Nigerians yearned for was still far away.

It was such a major problem that Nigerians who had felt that they had a saviour in GSM service to bail them out of the inefficient service of NITEL were disappointed and were spoiling for a war with the GSM operators. It became one of the reasons for the controversial GSM boycott of 2003.The problem was lack of transmission capacity. Most of the operators had to rely on satellite transmission as a temporary measure against the lack of transmission capacity available from the National Carrier, NITEL. This was often not very effective.

The GSM companies reacted swiftly to the problem. MTN Nigeria, for instance, apart from the use of satellite, deployed some $200 million to build a backbone from the Southern part of the country to the North. Christened Y’ello Bahn, the infrastructure was to serve the company in the transmission of its traffic across the country.

Vmobile, then Econet Wireless Nigeria, also spent about $110 million to also build a backbone in certain parts of the country..

Working with both Siemens and Alcatel, Globacom is already deploying an ultra-modern nationwide turnkey infrastructure for fast data and voice transmission via an optical network covering a length of over 2,800 kilometres. It is a ring which covers all parts of the country from the North to the South and from the East to the West. Today Globacom engineers can be seen on the Shagamu Benin expressway working frantically with its partner Siemens to deliver the transmission backbone on schedule.

When completed, the ring will cover most of the major cities and will form a major telecom backbone that will provide the capacity for a cocktail of services to subscribers.

MTS First Wireless which was also issued a Long Distance licence in addition to a Fixed Wireless licence and an International Data Gateway licence is also working hard to ensure that the full mandate of the licences are realised.

Last week, Richmond Aggrey, the CEO of the company told Editors in Vanguard that the company has begun the process of deploying its own transmission backbone which other operators can hook up to. The company would this week in China sign a contract which its partners, Eastcom and China Putian to deploy transmission infrastructure across the country.

The service that MTS is deploying is a fibre optic and microwave radio solution for Long Distance Communications within the territories of Nigeria.

It would provide Carrier-class, high capacity backbone that supports high density trunking gateways. It would also serve the commercial long distance needs of other PTOs, traffic retailers, ISPs, oil companies, financial institutions etc.

After the signing of the contract, Aggrey said that within 90 days, the Abuja-Lagos backbone would be ready. This would serve as a major relief to the industry because a lot of the traffic generated across the country is on this route. MTS further asserts that by the first quarter of next year, it would have put in place another backbone from Lagos to the Eastern parts of the country.

Apart from these two, NITEL is also building up its transmission capacity to keep pace with the demands of the market. To cater for the needs of the market, NITEL has strategic investments in regional infrastructure initiatives such as the SAT-3 submarine optic fibre cable network. Currently NITEL is involved in deploying this facility across the country, having linked it to the Lagos landing port. The SAT-3 submarine cable is a high capacity submarine cable linking Europe, West Africa, and South East Asia. NITEL has 7.33 % equity in this infrastructure.

NITEL is also currently involved in the implementation of a continuous network roll-out programme, with a systematic digitalization of its transmission systems.

The implication of this for most telecommunications companies, is that transmission would soon be available wherever and whenever it is needed in the country. The era where companies had to spend enormous amounts of its scarce resources in building its own transmission infrastructure are getting over gradually. Telecom companies would soon be able to concentrate more in running their core business of selling air time while transmission companies would be there to provide the bandwidth they require.