Regulation, Big Operators Emasculate Smaller Firms — Banjo

Bayo Banjo, is president of Nigeria Internet Group (NIG), a non-governmental organisation dedicated to promotion and growth of Internet in Nigeria. A veteran within the business echelons across Nigeria; he is also the CEO of Discom Limited, a leading telco in the forefront of revolutionizing telecommunication industry in Nigeria. Banjo is a pioneer in the fields of satellite communications, digital and mobile telephony and has an outstanding track record spanning a highly acclaimed career in communications, publicity and promotions. His consult is a recognized and highly valued resource. He shared his thoughts with Chike Onwuegbuchi

Internet Connectivity to Rural Areas

This is one of the most difficult things to do particularly in our environment. Abroad they can easily do this because in most cases they have people of integrity running it. If you want to go to a rural area, you go there find somebody who lives in that rural area and that is interested in doing the business. You will find that every village right now has a business centre. Somebody is running some sort of business, whether he is using Vsat or some other device to get the internet. You encourage that kind of person, you bring out special licenses that will cost maybe N2, 000. Do not call it a licence, call it a registration and you show him all the cheap ways that he can set up a proper distribution system. You can even task operators, maybe give them some tax relief if they supply internet to rural area. It must be done with policy and innovative ideas and you must find these people who like such place and want to stay there you encourage them. That is what federal governments do. When governments want to do anything in an unusual environment they send a team to go and investigate. Who are the people who like the environment? These are people who do not want to leave that village. They love the village, they are local champions in the village, if such people go to Lagos they will be nobody, so they are happy in the village. You encourage those kinds of people and say you have this grant from the World Bank, Unesco or whatever, help him with the process to buy small equipment that will cover the village. You then say to the big operators- for every point you provide, we give you a tax relief. You find some policy that will encourage the companies to help assist these people.
Human beings only operate on two fronts and that is the carrot and stick. If you want someone to do something, you either flog him or give him a reward. You must have a team at the NCC that in many cases is talking to this person that is not well educated. His interest is in cybercafé, he has set up his equipment by calling on one small boy from the city. Set up a team to train them to make them aware of how easy it is to provide the service, but that is the problem.

Digitization
First of all I think it was a mistake in the beginning to have allowed the issue of foreign broadcasting. We Nigerians behave as if we do not know anything. In America, unless you are an American citizen, you cannot have an outfit and it does not matter here. Foreign companies come and register and if you make too much noise they will go and get a Nigerian chairman or shareholders. That does not work abroad. You trace the interest, who has control? It does not matter what is on paper. This has been going on for a long time since the 70s.Once you see it is foreign controlled, you stop it immediately. You encourage Nigerians to reach certain level. That should be done in the broadcast industry. You find realistic ways on major policies to ensure that it is a Nigerian broadcaster in control.
Broadcasting is more powerful than military evasion. You can destroy a country by filling it with propaganda and misinformation. The old Soviet Union was toppled without firing a shot, using the media, inciting them into Western and capitalists’ values and the whole empire that was stronger, if not stronger than the United States crumbled on that basis and same thing is happening here. Lots of our values, God so kind, Nollywood has sort of taken off and pushed lots of the foreign films aside. You see films where homosexuality is normal and all these foreign vices. Children being rude to their parents, all these things have depreciated.
As for digitization, it is a welcome development. What I think is going to happen eventually is that there will be emerge of what is called centre point transmission companies. That means we would have two companies in Lagos that would broadcast; because a frequency allocation of 8MGHz in the olden days carrying one channel can now carry 14 to 16 channels. I think what would happen is that they would probably have central points for broadcast and these companies would provide channels.
When you want to broadcast you go to the NBC, you show them how you want to broadcast, what type of programme and the content. They would direct you to the broadcast person who charges a fee per year to help you broadcast and these people would broadcast maybe 50, 100, 200 channels. I do not think if the government is doing their policy right that when they renew the licences of AIT and others, I do not think it should come with a frequency. It would be like what you see with this Chinese company broadcasting for NTA. They are already carrying AIT and all others so the government policy would just say open air, no coding. I mean no payment because all television would be digitized and those televisions that are not would buy a small box so the only thing there is that the government must make sure that the boxes and new television come in. If you want to have a coding system, it must be slot in type card so that it can be changed. If tomorrow this system becomes obsolete, you can take out the card and slot in another card. Those are the standards that should be arranged.
Then of course you must remember that there is going to be broadcasting on the internet. Once we get broadband then a lot of broadcasting would be done on the internet. I think it is a good trend but there and then the government must judge the advantages and disadvantages.

Dwindling Fortune of Small Operators
It is a matter of regulation. Most of the small companies were run out of business by big operators who engage in a systematic approach of sabotage. They are still doing it even among themselves.  They do all sorts of sabotage but with the smaller operators they do things like cutting them off. The smaller operators then complain to the NCC. This is a process of letters you see. You complain to the NCC, the NCC then writes the operator saying we heard you cut the small operator off.
Under the procedure, you have to reply within three weeks. By the time you do three or four letters, two months have gone by and the small operator would have lost all his customers. There is no provision for damage. If we have a policy where the NCC says if you cut off this circuit, this is the amount of money the operator was making from you before he was cut off, you will now pay him that amount. Then you could rescue the small operators but right now most smaller operators do not have confidence in the NCC at all. The main thing we must understand is that you cannot progress with a big operator. A big operator by its very design is a saboteur of development. If I am a big operator, I install equipment nationwide and that equipment becomes obsolete, what would be my natural reaction to this? My reaction would be to make sure that none of the new equipment comes out and it is small operators that will bring out new equipment so I would sabotage them and keep the old technology and the old equipment running. This is a natural behavioural pattern. You cannot blame the operators for that but it is up to the NCC to realize that in this business in five years even sometimes three what just came out two years ago would be obsolete today and a big company would always try to get full value for its investments and the solution is to hold everybody back. If you want to get things running in Nigeria, you must have someone in charge at the NCC who has guts, strong, sound and is respected. Until we have such people we are still going to face this problem.

Reviving Smaller Operators
The major problem for small operators is that they do not trust the NCC that it would follow the laws and procedures to protect them from the big operators. It is like when investors are not confident in your country because there is war or whatever unrest in your country. What do you do to regain the confidence? To reassure the small operators, I would say first of all that the NCC should make the licensing procedures swift. Luckily an internet licence is N500,000 but obviously there must be something for the village, what they call registration. Those small companies find it difficult to raise funds because they usually work with their own funds and those from other interested parties so you must first try not to stress them too much.
You must make sure that the NCC branches have full representation, for example if I am in Sokoto, does the NCC have an office in Sokoto? Well, if they have, can the person go to that office and do everything he needs to do swiftly without having to spend money on airfare and hotel anytime he wants to do any little thing flying to Abuja. The NCC branches should be equipped so that when I walk in there, they do things quickly. If they have to do anything at the head office, let it go through the internet, send back the reply and give the authority.