The chief executive officer (CEO) Airtel Nigeria unit, Segun Ogunsanya has said Africa's biggest economy's telecoms market offers multiple growth opportunities, giving its untapped pontentials and vast investment options available in the industry.
He noted that with 78 per cent mobile penetration as at December last year, there was massive untapped market potential, saying broadband adoption is set to rise as demand for more stable Internet grows from the residential and business segments increases.
Ogunsanya said additional 47 million growth in subscribers level are expected within the next five years, saying this demonstrates massive untapped market potential and continued strong total telecoms revenue growth driven essentially by mobile data.
Providing insight on the theme, ‘Nigerian Telecoms Industry: Five Years Ahead,’ he noted that strong growth was expected from mobile financial services over the forecasting period and operators should ensure they are able to offer products to the large unbanked population of Nigeria, whilst growing demand for mobile apps and e-commerce will have a positive knock-on effect on mobile operators.
The Airtel CEO noted that Nigeria offers exciting opportunities for telecoms investors, giving her large population with rising incomes positions, the country is positioned as one of the most attractive destinations for investment on the African continent.
He said Nigeria has massive bandwidth capacity from the four undersea cables that has yet to be exploited and this will provide opportunities to domestic and international investors to take advantage of the growing broadband and data industry.
He, however, noted that key issues must be urgently resolved for the Nigerian telecoms industry to reach its full market potential.
Some of the issues, according to him are spectrum availability and adequacy, government commitment to the National Broadband Plan, tackling the monster of multiple-taxation, reliable and cost-effective power supply, protection of telecoms infrastructure from vandalism and resolving restrictions on telco activity in mobile money.
The Airtel chief also noted that due to explosive growth in mobile data traffic, operators require more spectrum to support this growth. Although he commended the NCC for making inroads towards spectrum availability and adequacy, he pointed out that there is an urgent need to expedite the release / award of frequency to operators as this will facilitate industry development.
Ogunsanya decried the incident of multiple-taxation, disclosing that revenue loss from idle or shut down base stations represent the main source of negative impact of multiple taxation and network vandalism for the industry. 2 to 3 percent of the country's sites are affected by arbitrary shutdown and vandalism at any given point in time.
An estimated cost of 9 billion naira in increased operating costs and lost of revenue costs yearly are recorded by the industry due to the arbitrariness in the implementations of government taxation policy.
Providing insight on the theme, ‘Nigerian Telecoms Industry: Five Years Ahead,’ he noted that strong growth was expected from mobile financial services over the forecasting period and operators should ensure they are able to offer products to the large unbanked population of Nigeria, whilst growing demand for mobile apps and e-commerce will have a positive knock-on effect on mobile operators.
The Airtel CEO noted that Nigeria offers exciting opportunities for telecoms investors, giving her large population with rising incomes positions, the country is positioned as one of the most attractive destinations for investment on the African continent.
He said Nigeria has massive bandwidth capacity from the four undersea cables that has yet to be exploited and this will provide opportunities to domestic and international investors to take advantage of the growing broadband and data industry.
He, however, noted that key issues must be urgently resolved for the Nigerian telecoms industry to reach its full market potential.
Some of the issues, according to him are spectrum availability and adequacy, government commitment to the National Broadband Plan, tackling the monster of multiple-taxation, reliable and cost-effective power supply, protection of telecoms infrastructure from vandalism and resolving restrictions on telco activity in mobile money.
The Airtel chief also noted that due to explosive growth in mobile data traffic, operators require more spectrum to support this growth. Although he commended the NCC for making inroads towards spectrum availability and adequacy, he pointed out that there is an urgent need to expedite the release / award of frequency to operators as this will facilitate industry development.
Ogunsanya decried the incident of multiple-taxation, disclosing that revenue loss from idle or shut down base stations represent the main source of negative impact of multiple taxation and network vandalism for the industry. 2 to 3 percent of the country's sites are affected by arbitrary shutdown and vandalism at any given point in time.
An estimated cost of 9 billion naira in increased operating costs and lost of revenue costs yearly are recorded by the industry due to the arbitrariness in the implementations of government taxation policy.
He asked government to unify taxes under one code and also bring to book vandals who deliberately destroy telecoms infrastructure.
0 comments:
Post a Comment