Keeping GSM operators on their toes

By Duro Bamidele

Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection suggests that ‘life is a competitive struggle to survive in the midst of limited resources’. Darwin declares that: “living things must compete for food and space. They must evade the ravages of predators and disease while dealing with unpredictable shifts in their environments, such as changes in climate”. Darwin also posited that within a given population in a given environment, certain individuals possess characteristics that make them more likely to survive.

Telecoms sector growth is no fluke

By Olatunde Akinfemiwa

It has long been speculated that Nigeria’s telecom sector is a significant contributor to the nation’s gross domestic product. One refers to the development as ‘speculations’ because there was never a comparative sectoral assessment as the ‘rebasing’ of the nation’s GDP undertaken recently by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). An appraisal of Nigeria’s GSM sector has simply been based on the sheer array of opportunities by way of direct and indirect jobs, income, business opportunities, small scale enterprises and sundry avenues it has provided for a large section of the population. In the main, some of the statistics peddled about the sector have been simple guess work. But the picture has changed.

NCC: Promoting operator-consumer interface

By Mathew Ayorinde

Many users of telecom services in Nigeria hold the belief that the general poor quality of services is a deliberate act on the part of the operators to rip-off subscribers and maximise profits. This has accounted for the trend whereby the average working-class citizen and entrepreneur own more than one mobile phone or multiple subscriber identification modules (sim cards), the number portability option notwithstanding.
Against such a background, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), has often stated its determination to mount pressure on telecom operators to offer optimal services to their subscribers.

Can NCC extend a helping hand?

By Sopuruchi Nnaemeka

Survival of the fittest has gone beyond Darwin’s principles of natural adaptation to being the driving force of entrepreneurship. Competition for scarce resources, which in this case are the factors of production – land, labour, capital and entrepreneurship has been quite exhausting for Nigeria’s small telecom companies.
This therefore calls for concerted effort on the part of the sector regulator, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) to device a survival strategy for small operators. Although this appeal may seem preposterous as this is in no way part of the commission’s mandate, it is nevertheless in good fate, considering how the sector has grown in leaps and bounds and how the fringe players could actually fill those gaps and plug the holes left by the big operators.