Wireless Federation

Celtel has breathed fresh air into the government’s quest for lower GSM tariff in the country by proposing strategies for reducing the huge operation cost of operators, one of the key causes of the prevailing cost of service.

According to Celtel’s Chief Operations Officer, Lars Stork, the main route to lower tariff is reduced cost of operation, a factor, generally regarded as the major impediment to lower tariff regime of GSM service.

He stated this while presenting a paper entitled “Commercial Strategies for Cooperation and Expansion” at the 5th International Nigeria Telecommunications Summit at the International Conference Centre, Abuja, Nigeria last Thursday.

Factors that could help to reduce operating cost outlined by Stork include public/private partnership in the provision of key requirement for successful GSM operation; increased local services achievable through government and industry support for Nigerian suppliers (in open and transparent tenders) to compete for supply of cost effective solutions; and sharing of expertise across the networks for synergy and greater effectiveness.

Other factors listed by Stork are: speeding up of local research aimed at building capacity and reducing dependence on offshore supplies; sharing co-location infrastructure among operators where technically and commercially feasible; and taking advantage of the economy of scale of operators with big buying power.

The Celtel officer, a Business Development expert with an extensive work experience in Nigeria and a number of African countries, also identified co-location infrastructure that can be shared by operators as transmission structures, masts and other structures. Methods of achieving effective sharing of resources highlighted include “one to one sharing, and simplified and uncomplicated infrastructure sharing, among others.’

He explained that operators could and should collaborate for the good of the industry and the society by jointly tackling common problems such as impediments to Environmental Impact Assessment; lack of certain basic infrastructure such as the appalling power supply situation; and multiple taxation. Others include mutually dealing with the obstacles to achieving fair interconnection between operators where feasible; and hindrances to stable regulatory environment.

The Celtel official said the mobile telephony would continue to be a vital driver for development as demonstrated by the company’s experience across 15 African countries. He also drew example from the Economist edition of March 2005, which reported the outcome of a research at the London Business School sponsored by the Vodafone. The report concluded that “plenty of evidence suggests that the mobile phone is the technology with the greatest impact on development. A new paper finds that mobile phones raise long term growth rates, and that their impact is twice as big in developing nations as developed ones,” saying this evidence further provide a reason for this optimism.

Also, he told the audience of Celtel success stories across the continent, saying the company is now a market leader in nine out of the 15 African countries in which Celtel operates.

Celtel operates in different countries with different cultures, political situations and difficult markets and over 17 million customers across Africa covering half of Africa’s population. Celtel, according to Stork, has sustained brand equity growth, a brand value which is 2.5 times greater than its EBITDA and a networth of over USD 1 billion; and has created over 6,000 jobs directly and over 60,0000 jobs indirectly.

Source- http://www.vanguardngr.com

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