Though the telecoms regulator, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has opened up the North Central region of the country for fibre investors through the Infrastructure Companies (InfraCo) model, industry observer fear high level investor apathy.
The fear, according to experts is linked to a number of factors including states’ government insistence in not shifting grounds on their high taxes for Right of Way (RoW), continued stay of telecoms parts on the 41items delisted from easy access for forex by the Central bank of Nigeria (CBN).
Checks showed that none of the InfraCo licencees for the remaining six zones of the country has done any remarkable progress due to issues bordering on RoW.
Besides, efforts of the federal government in convincing states to lower taxes levied on RoW have not yielded any result as licencees remain helpless and quiet in rolling out Fibre Optic Cables (FOCs) under the approved Open Access Model (OAM) of the government.
Business Hilights recalls that NCC had earlier in 2015 granted InfraCo license to IHS, a telecoms infrastructure provider for the North Central zone. IHS and MainOne were the first set of operators to be licensed as InfraCos. MainOne was to expand wholesale broadband services in Lagos.
But after about two and half years, IHS returned the license to NCC over difficulties in securing right of way approval to deploy infrastructure in the region. IHS like most of other InfraCos and telecoms operators are facing bottlenecks in securing ‘right of way’, – where operators are forced to pay levies that are not legalized, and vandalisation of their infrastructure.
NCC had adopted a phased approach in the licensing of the seven InfraCos across the country starting with Lagos, in the first phase, the other five zones (North East, North West, South West, South East, South West and South South)in the second phase and now North Central in the third phase.
Interested investor for the North Central is expected to submit Expression of Interest (EOI) at NCC office on or before December 3.
