Major telecoms plan recruitments to boost workforce in rural underserved this year
There are indications that Major Network Operators (MNOs) are at the verge of boosting their workforce ahead of expected rise in network expansion to drive broadband penetration and 4G consolidation across the federation.
Signals received before the end of 2017 suggested that the recruitment exercise would have started this month but for the hobbles suffered by many of them during the yuletide fuel scarcity.
Parallel Wireless, a telecoms company in Africa, says a solution to the current challenges being faced by telecoms companies in the country will be for the government to help them provide value to the rural market.
The group said investments in Nigeria’s rural areas will mean affordable workforce and employment opportunities to the millions of unemployed people in the rural areas.
“The service providers require innovative technology solutions to address the unique problems faced by them in addressing the rural market. One of the most critical issues faced by them is that of high incidence of power outages, which adds to the increased cost of conducting business as the telcos are forced to use generators to keep the networks up and running.
“Secondly, extremely low average revenue per user means that the telcos find it hard to justify the massive investment to expand and modernise the networks.
Besides, part of the drive to get new workers stemmed from planned fight against OTT service providers who had been discovered at draining revenues upon relying on MNOs facilities.
Otherwise, just as companies like WhatsApp, Skype and Facebook offering the same services as the telcos, the revenue by the firms, which also provide data for the applications to work, has reduce drastically.
An official of one the leading telecoms told newsmen recently that “Having lost over N10bn in the last two weeks and with no signs that the fuel scarcity will end soon, there are strong feelers that the telecoms companies that have planned to recruit new workers from January 2018 may have to put a hold on such plans.
