New 1st Vice President of ATCON, Nnamani seeks fresh interconnect settlement scheme
The newly elected first Vice President of Association of Telecoms Companies of Nigeria (ATCON) and chief executive of Medallion Communications Limited, Mr. Iyke Nnamani has called on the telecoms regulatory authority, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) to think outside the box as a way of finding lasting solution to the recurring Interconnect settlement crisis.
In an interview, he said “I know that a number of options and proposal are still under review. So, if anything has been done in that regard, not to the best of my knowledge”.
While describing the current scenario as work in progress, he argued that something need to be done fast because that’s the only way the current challenges with respect to interconnect indebtedness can be resolved.
“Every other thing has been tried and it has not worked, disconnecting operators that do not solve the problem. That even makes it worse in the actual sense of it because if somebody has passed traffic and has not paid and you disconnect, he simply does not have a means to pay. “That’s really at the heart of it, we must be specific. The last 10 to 12 years mostly in annual basis, the regulators have tried addressing this issue and result has remained the same which is threatening people with disconnection even those that were disconnected, that doesn’t mean they went to pay their debt, they simply went out of business.
“If you check, some of the older PTO’s that were disconnected, they simply went out of business and those debts went with them. So, there has to be a more efficient way to resolve this.
On the level of indebtedness on interconnection, he revealed that even now, “the last information available to me shows that it has been going up and again the fact why it is going up is clear. One, the current means of interconnection, which primarily is direct connection, peer-to-peer among operators is still the case. So, the challenge which has resulted from that still remains there”.
“The second is because there is no clear settlement scheme, operators that pass traffic, until they agree to pay, you don’t have a way to collect the money, and that has to be changed to move the industry forward, Nnamani argued.
Explaining more on chances of meeting the 30 per cent broadband penetration rate by year end, he added that “There are a number of critical building blocks that will make that happen. If those building blocks are not in place, we may have the best intentions but we won’t see results”.
“One of the building blocks is adequate funding. Is the funding already in place to be able to do this because this require long term return on investment thinking strategy for this kind of infrastructural project. It is not something you do today and the money is there tomorrow because if you want to price it to recover your investment, then it is going to be expensive for people, they will not use it and when people don’t use it, then, you don’t have the subscriber base to be able to generate revenue.
He said the best bet for the industry regulators is to work out funding options for players so as to achieve much as soon as possible.
