At the Annual NigeriaCom Event, an Information and Communications Technology (ICT) conference and exhibition, organised by Informa Telecoms and Media, the service providers said they need to protect their infrastructure in order to provide quality service for subscribers.
Director of Network Engineering, Etisalat Nigeria, Temi Ogunbambi stated that the problem of vandalism of the infrastructure contributed immensely to the poor quality of service been experienced by subscribers.
He also said that, “We need the public to have a sense of ownership, that even though the operators deployed the infrastructure, we actually deployed the infrastructure so that it can improve on subscribers’ daily live and businesses,’’ he said. According to him, telco infrastructure enables the public to meet their welfare, make their businesses more productive, further, adding to the improvement of the country’s economy.
Awadhesh Kalia, chief technical officer of Airtel Nigeria, also contributed by saying that the “operators of these services are working tirelessly to offer better services”. But the lack of maintenance protection of these infrastructure contributes to poor services the subscribers get at their end.
Kalia said that challenges such as securing of Right-of-Way (RoW), multiple taxation, infrastructure vandalism, among others were militating their efforts.
He urged government to put basic infrastructure in place, so as to assist the operators perform better. According to him, telecoms is an essential service and anyone vandalising its infrastructure is damaging the economy.
