Zero Downtime is Possible – Omoniyi

Abiodun Omoniyi is the managing director of VDT Communications, a corporate telecommunications company. Omoniyi studied Electrical Electronics Engineering with Communication and Computer Option. He started his foray into entrepreneurship with the sales and maintenance of  hardware computers and from there moved on to networking computers, which later gave birth to VDT Communications. Omoniyi spoke to chike onwuegbuchi and funmi ilesanmi  

Wireless Backhaul
I wouldn’t say we are just a wireless backhaul provider, our services encompasses proving access into the central communication infrastructure which we manage. One of the means of granting access happens to be through wireless. VDT prides itself as a broadband communication company but for us to be properly called a broadband communication company, we need to provide access into the broadband infrastructure. One of the ways by which we provide access into this broadband infrastructure is using wireless. That was how we got to win the wireless backhaul provider of the year.
Subscription to MainOne Service
We are all aware that MainOne has landed and services are being sold on it now. We are glad to welcome MainOne but I must say that we are one of those who first supported the idea of the submarine that MainOne was promoting then. I remember we are also part investor in the scheme so that we could all have alternative cable. If you are familiar with SAT -3, it is also a submarine cable. So how would this enhance our services? Like I mentioned, the services we provide are mainly corporate communication services and this could be point to point within a metro city or an inter-city communication service. MainOne cable brings in a third dimension to the line of services that we provide and that brings internet into our infrastructure. MainOne cable landed at the shores of Nigeria so this needs to be brought to the inter-land. If MainOne landed at the Bar Beach for instance, how would you move it to Ikeja, how would you take it to Ibadan and Kano? Obviously, you will see the inter-play of our infrastructure in there. Before now, we had the metro service which we use in interconnecting our customers and we have these infrastructure built out in every city where we have presence. If we immediately partnered with MainOne, it means that we will take MainOne from the shores of Lagos and from there distribute it inland to our different customers. This is how the MainOne service complements what we are currently offering and of course this is a good investment for us because it further deepens our service offering.
Challenges  
You know the environment is quite challenging and we all are aware of it. It is not just vandalization, it is a whole gamut of issues that we have but as a service provider, we need to be focused. Our customers are patronizing us because they know we would be able to deliver this service irrespective of the challenges. Though challenges exist, if we are mission focused, this should not be a deterrent. Yes, there are cable cuts but it is not only fibre cable that moves the traffic to its destination; there are other alternatives that can be used. We use fibre a lot especially for our inter-city operation, we have some fibre cable infrastructure laid in Lagos and in some parts of Abuja but in other cities, we use wireless to grant access into our main infrastructure, majority of which are leased from major carriers.

Nature of Relationship with Partners  
Triangle is a major wireless backhaul equipment supplier. I would say that we are its customer and if you made a customer a partner, that means you are taking him to the next level. Triangle has introduced and deployed a number of its equipment in our infrastructure both at the access level and also at the backhaul level to different customers. Triangle is a leading company that offers various equipment that allow high bandwidth to be transmitted wirelessly. We are also into partnership with other wireless equipment manufacturers as well but we found out that Triangle does the backhaul a lot better than most and when we talk of real microwave backhaul on the licensed band, Triangle is actually the force to reckon with. Yes, we have other equipment manufacturers that we use for the distribution network, we have Apertio Network, Transio Broadband and we also have Accelera but we reserve the space for carrying the backhaul for Triangle and its equipment has been qualitative and has allowed us achieve the quality aim that we won an award for.
Customer Interactive Forum
We wanted to interact with our customers, we wanted to appreciate them, we wanted to update them on developments within our company; the changing landscape, the changing services and the unique way by which we want to continue to provide it. Generally, the Customer Forum was interactive and we also wanted to get some feedbacks from customers so that we would be able to know how to improve on our service delivery to them. Given the success of what has happened, it was of immense benefits, all our customers turned out in large quantity and we are actually thinking of making it a quarterly affair. It is not going to be yearly, it is not going to be a one-off thing, we truly enjoyed it, we enjoyed the camaraderie and also the learning point that each of us was able to take out of it.
Possibility of Zero Downtime in IP Communication in Nigeria
One of the things we need to realize is that nothing is impossible if one sets his mind to achieving it and we may then start talking of it been very costly. Is it possible or impossible to have constant power supply in Nigeria for one year without the power going down? If our government can put their mind to it, this is possible. In the case of Nitel, there are several things happening now that we thought were impossible then. If you listened to the guest speaker, Mr. Dare Adeyemi, he said for them, they would take nothing less than having a zero downtime at GT Bank. We are looking at delivering service such that the customer communication link does not go down. This means you have to provide alternative routes. One link may go down but you need to switch to another route. If that route also went down the same time as the primary route goes down, then you need to provide a tertiary route. What are the things that could cause these downtimes? One of it is power, if you knew it is power then you need to make sure your generator is always on, you need to provide alternative power supply and also backups. These are things providers need to put their minds to and they need to do to be able to achieve zero downtime. In VDT, it is not just a slogan, it is something that we do, it is something that is more like a creed for us to provide zero downtime in our infrastructure. We may now start talking about individual customers. We also want to understand why they are experiencing that downtime and be able to make it a point that is not due to our own doing but simply due to what the customer understands. Of course, we may not be able to come in to power the customer’s infrastructure. If the customers has a generator problem, there may be a downtime, if the customer has environmental issues that goes against the specification by which our equipment can operate smoothly, there also may be a down but this would be isolated cases at the edges.
Yes, we can achieve zero downtime in our core IP infrastructure. For two months running, I would say we have achieved that in our core infrastructure so how do we take it to the edge? To the edge, we’ve also started taking a clue. We have put a process in place and we also have three areas of backups at each of our hubs and then at the access layer. The access layer is the customer’s end of the equipment. If this happens, the customer also knows because we do have a review session with our customers and then we are able to tell them what to do because the whole system needs to come up and that was what the whole Customer Forum tried to achieve.
Awards
I can only say the award was a call to service. I would also say is it a form of recognition and a call for rededication for us to take it to the next level of our service.
Unified Communication in IP Communication
IP Communication is enveloping everything right now. Before now, there was the traditional TDM side of the infrastructure but now some of those are also gradually changing to packets. So if you are changing to packets, nobody would want to stand still because if everything is packetised, the whole system would be more efficient. To this end, that is to me what IP communication is about as this is driven by data centric approach. Going on to unified communication, this is another service that rides on the IP infrastructure. If we have an IP infrastructure that is embedded in our MPLS core right now, it would provide unified communication services to our customers. Essentially, unified communication is bringing your phone, your email, your video together on either an infrastructure or on a device. That is actually happening today but what we are concerned about is building an infrastructure that would be amendable to such services in future. We have a number of our customers that are doing these different things in a disparage way, some do it singularly while some talk on our network across their branches while some use  it for video conferencing. Unified communication brings these things together and we are thinking of leaving this in the hands of integrators so that they can offer these services to customers.
Support 
In terms of support, we are very close to the customers. We know that we do not have too many of them because we are not really into the retail business. We service corporate organizations and we have dedicated people in every city. In some mega cities like Lagos, we have different service groups that offer support to customers. This is one of the things we have been able to do. We also have a central system that monitors how fast our technicians are able to deliver support in relation to our service level agreement to different customers. We have a number of processes and we have the capacity to support our customers. In terms of support, we have dedicated people who are very close to the customers and we do offer support.
Future of VDT  
This technological landscape changes so fast and it’s quite dynamic. One of the things we want to do in the next five years is for VDT to be a recognized name in the corporate communication sub-sector of the communication industry as providing the best service. By that, we would by the grace of God be present in the 36 states of the federation. Right now, we are in 16 of those states so we would be present in all the nooks and crannies of Nigeria and we would be a recognized name known for quality of service.