ALTON, ATCON assures on quality service, claims no damage to facilities

• Urges Govt to compensate those who lost properties to #EndSARS protest

FOLLOWING the carnage that trailed the #EndSARS protests and the resultant wanton damages of both public and private properties, especially in Lagos, telecoms operators have said that there were no damages to their facilities.

Chairman of the Association of Licensed Telecoms Operators of Nigeria (ALTON), Gbenga Adebayo, who made the disclosure on Wednesday, October 28, said no member reported any damage to their facilities.

He added that except those who have offices running on franchise in some of the malls that were looted, there was no reported case of damage to Base Tranceiver Stations (BTS), cables, among others.

Giving assurance to the over 200 million subscribers in the country of improved telephony services, Adebayo recalled that the outages experienced, especially during the protests period, were compounded by power and other operations-related issues that occurred across some major routes in Lagos metropolis and other states.

The outages ad disruptions resulted in congestion of networks and had subsequent impact on quality of services.

According to him, movement restrictions and the volatility on the streets also compounded the restoration of outages as engineers were not able to move about to fix the problems.

“However, that has been sorted out now. Services have improved, and we are working to ensure subscribers are served efficiently and adequately across the country,” he said.

The ALTON chairman beckoned on government to compensate Nigerians that genuinely lost properties to the protests, saying this will further boost their confidence in the government.

Also, the sister-body to the ALTON, the Association of Telecoms Operators of Nigeria (ATCON), has assured of improved service.

ATCON President, Olusola Teniola, said: “we are happy to report that no members’ network infrastructure was willfully damaged. However, incidents relating to shops and outlets may have resulted in our members’ customer experience centres being impacted and most certainly mobile device retail outlets were affected due to looting. On the whole we are unscathed.”

Meanwhile, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) said as at 2019, there were 58,755 BTS and Co-location towers in the country.

The Commission put Microwave coverage at 302,036.56km with 124 Gateways in use by the industry.

According to the government agency, Fibre Optics cable deployment stood at 104,379.32km (82,585.32km of terrestrial fibre and 21,812km submarine cable).

It listed five states with the highest number of telecoms towers in the country.

They are Lagos 9,860; Ogun 3398; Rivers 3329; FCT 3034 and Oyo 2842.

However, states with least number of BTS are Jigawa 316; Yobe 422; Zamfara 434; Gombe 521, and Kebbi 561.

The commission further said that the number of existing base stations in the country invariably affects the QoS within the country, thereby positively impacting the level of telephone penetration within the nation, which equates to attracting foreign investment and growth in the telecoms industry.