Dele Ogbodo in Abuja
The Nigerian Communications Commission
(NCC), on Monday, said arrangement had been concluded to unveil new
pricing cost for wholesale fix transmission service providers in the
telecommunication industry.
The Commission expressed optimism that
the new pricing will accelerate the broadband penetration through making
transmission links competitive and affordable to end users across the
country.
With the new pricing model, NCC said
consumers will be able to afford data in the long run, adding that there
is need for a level playing field for all operators in the segment.
Speaking at a stakeholders’ forum in
Abuja, the Executive Vice Chairman of NCC, Prof. Umar Danbatta, said,
research carried out by KPMG in conjunction with telecommunication
operators revealed that the old wholesale fixed pricing has been
excessively discriminatory and arbitrary among industry operators and
users.
Danbatta also explained that
investigation carried out by a project team constituted by NCC, which
included MTN, Glo, Airtel, MainOne, Phase3Telecom and market operators,
revealed that there was excessive pricing of fixed transmission link
which has raised a lot of concern in the sector.
He said: “The study revealed that
wholesale and retail customers in the transmission market capacity in
the country were excessively high and not reflective of cost.
“Specific examples were situation in
which bandwidth prices for route between Lagos and London was lower that
between Lagos and Kano or Port Harcourt. Another issue that was
identified was the issue of discriminatory prices of transmission links.
It was observed that pricing was not based on cost, distance or any
particular formula.”
According to him, statistical report by
the International telecommunications Union (ITU), indicated that
broadband penetration between 2014 and 2015 is still low, adding that
modalities had been put in place to increase the penetration rate by 30
percent before 2018.
The NCC boss said: “ KPMG was hired to
conduct and develop a comprehensive cost model using data collated from
operators in the transmission cable market and draw inferences on the
cost of providing transmission services in Nigeria and the transparency
and competitiveness of pricing in the transmission markets.”
He said the study on the determination
of cost based pricing of fixed transmission services will set the pace
for effective competition in the wholesale leased lines transmission
capacity market in the telecommunications industry.
In a remark, the Chief Marketing Officer
of Broadbased Communications, Mr. Chidi Disu, argued that new pricing
model did not take into consideration current situation in foreign
exchange rate market and the depreciating value of the Naira, adding
that implementing the new model by NCC will force lastmile operators out
of business.
According to him, the different prices
on the Right of Way, by the different states is also not helping
operators, adding that the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), for example
has increased the cost of RoW by 35 percent.