Nigeria Needs Major Operators for Healthy Competition –Ndukwe

Ndukwe said that "there are still three dominant operators, Celtel has come out, Globacom and MTN are still investing. But for a country like Nigeria to witness healthy competition among operators, you need not less than six serious competing telcos for effective competition.

"We are hoping that companies like Visafone, Etisalat, Multilinks and Starcoms will be able to put in the right resources that are required to grow their networks, then, you now start seeing competition", Ndukwe noted.

To compete effectively, he said, the investment requirement is huge and that it is not something that one company even with all the good intentions can handle, adding that all the companies involved requires major injection of money to grow their networks and "we need, like I said, about six good telcos with heavy infrastructure to create healthy competition which the country is in dire need of".

Speaking further, the NCC boss said Nigeria is going into the next phase of evolution where many of the virgin companies are coming together, citing example of Visafone which he described as a combination of three companies and perhaps the three first runners today in CDMA if they are able to source good funding, they can provide the required competition.

On the status of broadband in Africa, Ndukwe noted that the continent needs to enforce broadband. This, he said, led the his Commission to institute the Wire Nigeria Project (WNP) and State Accelerated Broadband Initiative (Sabi).

"When we came out with these two projects, it did not mean we are going to start installing cable or infrastructure. First of all, is to sensitive the operating companies about the need to do that and many of them have responded positively".

The world, he continued, is a village and that the only way to be part of the village is to build our own highway into the worldwide village in order to lower the prices of broadband in the entire continent, adding Africa needs to realize in their own interest to grant landing right to various on-going initiatives in order to achieve this important goal.