Nigeria Expects a Quadrupling of GSM Base Stations Within 3 Years

Ernest Ndukwe, the Executive Vice-Chairman & Chief Executive of Nigeria's telecoms regulator - the NCC says that he expects the country to have some 40,000 GSM base stations by 2010, along with some 10,000 CDMA towers. At the moment, the country has around 10,000 GSM towers and 2,000 for the CDMA operators.

Speaking at a press conference last week, he noted that teledensity in the country had reached about 38 million lines - of which a staggering 97% are mobile lines with just 3% being landlines. However customers are still complaining about network congestion and dropped calls on mobile networks.

He cited problems caused by overlapping regulation, particularly in Lagos and Abuja, where planning controls are slowing the erection of new base station towers. He also noted that the unreliable power supply often forces operators to install expensive back up generators and fuel supplies. If these are stolen or vandalized, then subscribers start to experience problems making phone calls until the operator can investigate and repair the damage.

However, he didn't give the operators a clean bill of health either citing tariff promotions which promoted excessive use of the networks before capacity was available to support them. "Some of the operating companies have been irresponsible with respect to forward planning and forecasting. This will incur future sanctions if found to contribute to deterioration in quality of service."

The Mobile World reports that Nigeria currently has a mobile market penetration level of nearly 28% - and the growth rate has been in the region of a million new subscribers per month.

Posted to the site on 30th September 2007