Nigeria Loses N730bn to Poor Telecoms Services Annually, Says Expert

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The Chief Executive Officer of Back-Up Networks Limited, Mr. Monday Ogbe, has disclosed that Nigeria lost N730 billion to poor service quality in the telecoms industry this year. He said the loss has been a reoccurring decimal for several years past.

The huge loss, according to Ogbe, compelled Back-Up Networks to introduce the www.idonport.com portal, a solution designed to address services quality issues in the telecoms industry.

He noted that everybody suffers as a result of poor service quality, including the consumer, the service providers and the economy as a whole.

Analysing the typical loss to the consumer, the service provider and the economy, Ogbe said, “For 100 million subscribers experiencing 10 minutes of poor service quality and quality of experience at N10 average failure rate, the net loss to subscribers is N1 billion per day."

He said: “Providers’ inability to service 100 million subscribers with potential 20 minutes calls due to consistent 10 minutes downtime equals N2 billion, but with less than N1 billion earned as a result of poor quality repeat calls, the net loss to service provider equals N1 billion."

As a result, he said the Nigerian economy loses N2 billion per day, owing to the net losses from the consumers and the operators income, bringing the total losses in a year to the economy within 365 days to an estimated N730 billion as a result of poor Quality of Service (QoS) and poor Quality of Experience (QoE), Ogbe said.

To address the challenges of QoS/QoE for the over 121 million active phone lines in the country, Ogbe explained that the web-based solution from Back-Up Networks, known as idonporto.com portal, would enable customers to monitor network quality online.

The portal, according to him, provides empirical data that operators can also use to correct anomalies, insisting that if an operator fails to monitor the portal to make necessary correction, there is tendency for it to lose subscribers, who will be willing to port to another network, since they can also monitor network challenges online, using the web portal.

Ogbe said customer service experience is presented on the site so the customer can make informed decisions as to who to subscribe to.

Service providers can use the report to improve on their performance.

“With idonport.com, telecoms subscribers can ensure mobile device is compliant and fault free, report service degradation promptly, inform operators if there are planned events that might require extra capacity provisioning to avoid future service degradation," Ogbe said.

He added, “Also, personalised test softwarefrom.idonporto.com can be used to test the network and report findings to the service provider and allows subscriber to port to a more reliable network, based on empirical data provided by the portal on a service provider.”

The portal, he said, would also allow the operators to ensure regular coverage monitoring and improvement on their networks.

He explained that idonport.com remained a vital resource centre for comparison with operator internally generated testing data. The data provided by the portal also include performance rating for Internet Service Providers (ISPs).

Backup Network, for the past seven years has been actively involved in the country's quality of service testing and measurement engineering space with technical competence to give informed opinion on quality service situation in the country’s telecoms industry.

Back-Up Networks represents Ascom Network Testing of Switzerland, a global company reputed as the world leader in QoS equipment manufacturing, testing and measurement, with 25 years’ experience and operations in over 180 countries.

Back-Up Network and Ascom Test tool was chosen by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) to deploy QoS testing equipment for the regulator to carry out QoS testing for accurate measurement of the operators’ service quality levels.