Telcos Call for Regulatory Intervention to Protect Business Interest of Small Operators
Chairman of the Association of Licensed Telecoms Operators of Nigeria (ALTON), Gbenga Adebayo
Emma Okonji
Telecom operators (Telcos) have called on industry regulator, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), to be more proactive in protecting the business interest of small operators, in order to keep them afloat.
The Telcos who made the call in Lagos through the Chairman, Association of Licensed Telecom Operators of Nigeria (ALTON), Mr. Gbenga Adebayo, said the need to protect small operators became necessary, following the recent Internet Service Provider (ISP) licence issued to Starlink by the NCC, to operate in Nigeria.
Worried that Starlink is owned by the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, telecom operators are of the view that Starlink may likely introduce stiff competition that could send smaller ISPs packing, if Starlink is not controlled by existing industry regulation.
Adebayo said the telecom industry has moved with technology trends, since inception, and that the successes recorded in the industry, was as a result of the combined efforts of both the big and small players that have continued to respond to technological innovations. He said both the small and big operators had never played the catch-up game, because as new technologies evolve, operators adopt and invest in the technologies as they trend, adding that the smaller operators deserve to be protected in order to remain relevant in business.
According to Adebayo, “The regulator should seek to protect the smaller players in the industry, because their service offerings are as important as the service offerings of the bigger operators. We have different tiers of players in the industry, ranging from tier 1 to tier 2, tier 3, tier 4 and even tier 5, and they are all important in the growth of the entire ecosystem.
Regulation must be mindful of the behaviour of the big players that could impact negatively on the small players. Today, many Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have gone under because of unfavourable competition against them from the big players. In the early days, we had the core ISP operators and telecom operators, but as technology evolves, convergence became inevitable and the telecom operators started offering internet services, which was hitherto the core business of ISPs. With the new development, some of the ISPs could not compete favourably with the big telecom operators, which eventually forced them into extinction.”
