Nigeria Content Online

Professionals in
the telecommunications sector have said that the shutdown of
telecommunications Base Transceiver Station (BTS) sites by National
Environmental Standards and Regulations Enforcement Agency (NESREA) has
thrown up security implications for the sector.

The agency, a
parastatal of the Federal Ministry of Environment, Housing and Urban
Development, is responsible for the protection and development of the
environment, biodiversity conservation, and sustainable development of
Nigeria’s ecosystem.

Speaking at a press
conference on Wednesday, in Lagos, Gbenga Adebayo, the president,
Association of Licensed Telecommunication Operators of Nigeria (ALTON),
said, “Subscribers in some parts of Abuja, Kaduna, Ilorin, Lagos, and
Owerri have been experiencing significant deterioration in service
quality over the last couple of weeks caused by the invasion and
closure of BTS sites by NESREA.”

He said it is
regrettable that BTS sites are incessantly sealed or locked up by
government ministries, departments, and agencies, typically employing
taskforces to forcefully extract illegal levies and other inappropriate
commitments from operators.

“This is done
without careful consideration of the harmful effects of such lockouts
to the economy, foreign investment drive, safety, and security; as well
as the wider implications on the generality of the Nigerian populace,”
added Mr. Adebayo.

However, Mr.
Adebayo explained that the closure of the sites by NESREA was followed
by the alleged failure of the telecom operators to submit Environmental
Audit Reports (EAR’s) for all BTS sites in the country by August 23,
2010.

Its implications

Since the inception
of mobile telephony, telecom operators have constantly complained that
the sector faces many challenges including multiple regulatory bodies,
multiple taxation, lack of power supply, lack of security in BTS sites,
which has drastically affected the operation of their businesses.

“The immediate and
long term implications of these incessant site closure is that BTS
sites go down resulting in the disruption or outright loss of
telecommunications services, and by extension, it is the economy that
is suffering,” Mr. Adebayo said.

He said this has
resulted in dire consequences such as national security concerns, which
prevent law enforcement and security agencies to respond to crime
activities, inability of the concerned persons and agencies to respond
to medical emergencies, as well as economic strangulation. He explained
that a breakdown at BTS sites affects other sectors that rely on their
service to function:

“Most banks’ ATM,
airlines ticketing, government e-payments, and other online services
would be paralysed. This would lead to huge economic losses for
businesses, the government and the nation.”

However, Mr.
Adebayo added that subscribers should not expect reduction in tariff
soon, as the implication of the closure of the BTS sites does not
guarantee the reduction of tariff because the cost of doing business in
the country is still very high.

Damian Udeh, the
publicity secretary of ALTON, said that most of the closed BTS sites
were also collocation sites. In 2008, the Nigerian Communications
Commission (NCC) licenced about fourteen collocation companies in order
to address the issues of such environmental regulations.

“ALTON and the NCC
encourage collocation amongst operators, and operators are responding
to collocation companies. ‘But the way it is every operator wants to roll out their network as quickly as possible. So sometimes, those
collocation companies are not able to meet your demand and that
operator would want to build its own sites,” Mr. Udeh said.

Solution

Mr. Adebayo
explained that the NCC must exercise its responsibility to protect the
sector and regulate issues that affect the sector.

“We believe that the sector should have only one regulator and the
NCC should take up its responsibility as the regulator of the sector,”
he said.