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| Dr. Hamadoun Touré |
UNITED Nations telecommunications agency-- the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) in its recent survey, put global mobile subscription at the end of 2011 at six billion, stressing that there were now more mobile phone subscriptions in the world as people. The survey also stated that there are nearly seven billion people on Earth.
The ITU study, which was titled “Measuring the Information Society 2012”, examined 155 countries. It assessed their access to and use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT), but found almost one billion mobile subscriptions in China.
The launch of the report coincided with the just concluded ITU Telecoms World Conference in Dubai, UAE, where various issues bedeviling the global telecoms and IT space were tabled.
With representations from over 150 countries, gathered for five days at the Dubai World Trade Centre, venue of the conference, experts, including top government functionaries from Nigeria used the period to deliberate on measures to be adopted in deepening ICT growth.
While declaring open the summit, the Secretary-General of ITU, Hamadoune Toure said that the world had been brought together through the power of ICT.
Toure advocated that policies backed with sustainability and consistencies should be the next frontier in driving further the present level of development occasioned by the advent of technology.
He urged developing nations to back their policies, especially in the match towards improved broadband regime with actions.
As such, he lamented that there had been policy inconsistencies in the administration of ICT among nations, especially developing ones.
Acknowledging the growth in the global mobile subscriptions put at six billion and over 2.3 billion users of the Internet, Toure said that operators must invest in infrastructure to expand communications reach, stressing that government, especially in the developing economies, must dream big, because it had positive effect for the future.
According to him, for broadband to grow, government, private sector and the operator must work in collaboration. He advised that the regulator should regulate with precision.
Indeed, if ICT development must be even in the years to come, one critical area seeking urgent attention, according to experts revolves around issues of taxation and in Nigeria multiple taxation.
To them, taxation had done more harm than good to the technology industry.
Dwelling more on the impact of taxation in ICT growth in Nigeria and indeed Africa, former Executive Vice Chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Dr. Ernest Ndukwe said that government was not always working in the best interests of the ICT sector.
“In Nigeria, ICT companies are generally regarded as cash cows and an easy way of meeting revenue targets. In a number of cases, taxes are so high that they make certain ventures and services non-viable and unaffordable.”
According to him, the solution lay in education and public awareness for government officials and ICTs have to drive this awareness in their various countries.
Other discussants from USA, India, Algeria and Dubai who shared different opinions on broadband penetration in Africa and the developing countries of the world, agreed that regulation of telecoms’ technology would retard broadband growth in the region.
Mr. Chris Gabriel, from Germany explained that the challenge that most African countries faced was government intrusion in regulating the technology driving telecommunications, which limited the level of innovation of the telecoms providers.
Regulators, he added, would always want to assert their regulatory powers on operators and operators would always want to improve on innovation and speed in the use of technology, while the consumers would always want the best of service from operators.
According to him, the interests of the three parties were necessary for telecoms growth, but warned that too much assertion of regulatory powers from authorities could hamper growth in telecommunications, especially in broadband penetration.
The German based ICT expert advised that the best way to achieve growth was collaboration between the regulators, operators and consumers, in order to have a common front that will foster development.
Gabriel stressed the need or consumers’ interest to be considered first, calling on African leaders to partner the private sector in driving growth of telecommunications in the African region.
In his contribution to the discussion on broadband penetration and growth in developing economies, Robert Pepper from USA advised Nigerian government to build and develop infrastructure rollout in the country, instead of allowing operators to do so, with the assistance from the USPF generated money.
“If government bears the responsibility of infrastructure rollout, it will relieve telecoms operators the burden of combining service delivery with infrastructure rollout,” Pepper said.
Addressing the issue of technology regulation, which often results in multiple taxations, Pepper said that telecoms operators would only abide to the regulatory dictates of the regulator and would not carryout innovations that would drive healthy competition, should government regulate the technology.
In his own contribution, EVC of NCC, Dr. Eugene Juwah, who spoke on the commission’s initiative in introducing the Universal Service Provision Fund (USPF) created to assist Nigerian telecoms operators in rolling out telecoms services in rural and underserved communities, said that NCC would soon conclude plans to deploy a new business model known as the Open Access Model that would further drive telecoms growth and broadband development in the country.
He added that the Open Access Model would help deepen broadband penetration, through the unbundling of telecommunications infrastructure into different layers that would make it easy for operators to take up a layer and develop it to maximum capacity and use.
Juwah, who linked increasing network congestion in Nigeria to lack of telecoms infrastructure backhaul, noted that unless the issue of infrastructure backhaul was addressed, Nigeria would continue to suffer congestion across networks.
He called on telecoms operators in Nigeria, Africa and the rest of the world, to always consider developing infrastructure backhaul that would stand as backup to support the network in periods of crisis.
“Services from mobile network operators should be backhauled in order to serve more people on the network, without the slightest experience of network congestion,” Juwah said, while addressing participants at the conference.
Addressing other challenges in the Nigerian telecoms sector, Juwah said that infrastructure sharing and collocation, especially in the area of fibre optic cable rollout, had also been a major challenge among telecoms operators. He, however, said that the issue had been tackled.
“Telecoms operators fear sabotage in sharing fibre cables, and would rather prefer to rollout their own cable,” he said.
Explaining how the challenge was resolved, Juwah said that the commission introduced a collective ownership of fibre rollout by the operators, with an independent consortium to manage it on behalf of all the operators.
Speaking on the economic benefit of infrastructure sharing, Juwah said that it would facilitate faster infrastructure rollout, drive down the cost of telecoms services and improve service quality.
Juwah advised telecoms operators in the African region and the entire world, to adopt the principle of convergence in telecoms, as converged technology would drive the economies of the world.
Other countries like Algeria, India, Uganda, Tanzania, Sudan, among others that were present at the five-day conference in Dubai, also listed their challenges in telecommunications and the measures put in place to address them.
For instance, ministers from those countries largely accepted the position on taxation; they however, noted that taxation levels were sadly not always within the powers of the communications and technology ministries.
“There is a problem with the minister of communication and the ministry of finance,” said Minister for Uganda Ruhakana Rugunda, “One wants low taxes to facilitate growth but the finance minister is more senior and he wants to raise money.”
The Guardian Nigeria