More revelations have emerged on why the expected nationwide outreach speed from nTel, the new investors in NITEL was slow after all.
In an interview, Chief Executive Officer of nTel, Nigeria’s leading latest entrant to GSM services, Kamar Abass said “Nothing was on ground when we bought NITEL. The cables have been destroyed, exchanges were not working, the BTS, among others…”
On why the chances of revival of the landlines which are still working perfectly alongside the mobile, in UK and other climes, he said “The landlines in Nigeria are not of use. For the 100 years since Alexander Granham Bell invested the telephone, the U.S. has maintained it”.
“Fibre has replaced copper; copper has been enhanced in places to drive digital subscriber line (DSL), and they have invested more in that line. They have kept it going for over 120 years.
Continuing, Abass gave some details saying, “When NITEL stopped trading, it had around 400,000 lines, but when MTN came in and over a period of time, about a year, they had over a million customers”.
“So, it would be difficult for its restoration in this part of the world. Indeed, for 4G, there are some things you can do on the wireless, which replaces so many things on the fixed lines. Economically, we had to think very hard about what is the specific use of this in our world. With 4G broadband, it is hard to think of a use case at a lower end of fixed line.
On why the latest National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) recently placed nTel above others in VoIP, while noting that “I don’t know much about what our competitors are doing,” he revealed that “What we have done at nTel is that we have delivered a high quality service”.
“We have focused on wide coverage, which are Lagos, Abuja, and Rivers, even in the hinterland of these cities. We have equally deployed a high level of technology on voice and data, which continues. We try as much as possible to ensure that our customers get the best value for their money.We deliberately manage our network to ensure that we can support some very key use cases. These include good access to the web and reliable voice services.
Abass who denied restricting nTel’s services to Lagos, Abuja and Rivers states, observed that “They are our starting point. This is to ensure that we can measure investment very well, work to get maximum returns and plough back and spread to others cities”.
