Daily Trust - the online edition

While some stakeholders agreed that there is improvement in the quality of telecommunications services in the country, others challenge the Telecom’s Regulator -NCC to wake-up from its slumber and save the industry at the just concluded 2nd Quality of Service Summit in the Telecommunication Sector held in Abuja, last week

In his part, the Minister of State for Information and Communication, Ibrahim Dasuki Nakande appreciated the GSM operators efforts to rescue the situations.

He said "I disagree to the facts that we don’t have any difference, since the last summit, there are a lot of improvement in the system but they hardly been seen, we hope very soon it will get to level that every body can feel it."

According to him, "the country is very big, there are challenges of expansion, there is issue of funding, and power, am sure with is type of the discussion we will try to passion our ways for improvement."

He said the summit is part of the efforts to address the problems, as you can see many revelations are now coming out from this summit, so we are doing our best"

The minister urged that Nigerians should be patient, saying that there are new investors coming, especially with the entrance of new company that will also deploy 3g service in the network.

In his view, the Executive Vice Chairman, Nigerian Communication Commission, Engineer Ernest Ndukwe said a lot has been done by government to ensure that quality of service improved generally.

He said "it is something that we are all committed to, the operators are under pressure to perform, they assured us that we are going to start seeing different by the end of this quarter.

But for Folake Oshoro, Deputy Chairman, House Committee on Communications, said there is nothing to write home about since the last quality of service summit held to address the situation.

She said the issue of quality of service is not difficult thing to testify, "We don’t have to do many calculations to arrive at whether there is improvement in the network or not, Nigerians are tired of these type of reports that they spend billions to invest, all we want to see is reality"

"After all deliberations, summits, there seem to be no improvement at all, therefore we can do what ever possible, even if it meant to impose proper sanction we most ensure that NCC has live up to expectations"

Other participants who spoke to IT World also decried the poor network provided by the GSM service providers

Some of the GSM companies that presented there reports at the conference said they investing huge in infrastructure in order to accommodate the existing congestion in the network.

Globacom Olajide Aremu said the company builds about 20 switches each with one million capacity, across the country.

He said Glo network is ready to accommodate additional 4 million subscribers in the network, in addition we have 2,500 km fibre optic surrounded the country.

According to him Glo will soon begins regional interconnectivity where by switches will be fix in the 37 states including Abuja.