The Nigerian Communications Fee (NCC) has attributed the poor high quality of telecom service being skilled in Lagos, Abuja and different main cities in Nigeria to insufficient capability throughout the networks to help heavy utilization in high-density city areas.
The Fee gave the reason in a doc highlighting the outcomes of its analysis findings on the networks in partnership with broadband intelligence agency, Ookla.
With a selected concentrate on information expertise, NCC famous that the excessive density of lively web customers in city areas contributes to the problem of dropped video calls, buffering on streams, failed cell funds, and sluggish downloads.
“General, community capability for information companies throughout the nation seems good. Nevertheless, capability points have been noticed in city areas throughout all main operators,” the telecom regulator acknowledged.
“Capability restrictions are concentrated in city zones, the affect on rural service is extraordinarily low, reinforcing that this constraint is a localized difficulty tied to high-density areas,” the Fee added.
Want for extra investments
Whereas calling for extra focused investments by the telecom operators, NCC mentioned the simplest technique to alleviate capability pressure in cities is a multi-faceted strategy specializing in two objectives, which embody “aggressively deploying 5G expertise and optimizing the capability of the present 4G (LTE) community to enhance efficiency for all customers.”
“Whereas the Nationwide Proportion reveals a minimal total affect throughout the nation, the problem is intensified in high-density city areas.
“This localized congestion leads on to peak-hour efficiency degradation, confirming that focused infrastructure funding in these city zones is most crucial to make sure constant service high quality,” it acknowledged.
Subscriber expertise
A current Nairametrics report highlighted subscribers’ frustration over the standard of companies they’re getting from the telecom operators, particularly information service.
- In a single occasion, a subscriber narrated how the very best she may get from her 5G router was a 1MBPs, which solely works higher at night time.
- Others have additionally lamented over poor sign power and intermittent outages, which deprive them connectivity principally at essential occasions.
- Nevertheless, telecom operators have additionally blamed the subscriber expertise on perennial instances of fibre cuts and injury to telecom infrastructure throughout the nation.
In keeping with them, fibre cuts have been draining the purse of the telecom operators as they maintain spending on repairs whereas shedding income inside the interval of the service outage in affected areas.
In the meantime, the NCC additionally not too long ago buttressed this level with information, noting that telecom operators have been recording a mean of 1,100 fibre cuts each week.
What it’s best to know
In August final yr, President Bola Tinubu signed an official gazette designating telecom infrastructure as vital nationwide data infrastructure and making it a prison offence for anybody to wilfully destroy such infrastructure within the nation.
- In keeping with the Minister of Communications, Innovation, and Digital Financial system, Dr Bosun Tijani, the gazette, ‘Designation and Safety of Essential Nationwide Data Infrastructure Order, 2024’, is a big step that will strengthen and defend investments within the ICT sector.
- Nevertheless, that was not the primary time such a declaration could be made. In June 2020, the speedy previous Minister of Communications, Dr. Isa Pantami introduced an identical motion by former President Muhammadu Buhari.
- Additionally, as a part of measures to deal with the problem, the Federal Ministry of Works (FMoW) and the Federal Ministry of Communications, Innovation, and Digital Financial system (FMoCIDE) in February this yr, shaped a Joint Standing Committee on the Safety of Fiber Optic Cables.
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