We have no issues with NCC– Kamar Abass

The Chief Executive Officer of NATCOMS, the parent company of ntel, Mr. Kamar Abass, speaks to OZIOMA UBABUKOH about the company’s reintroduction of fixed lines, among other issues

 

Recently, there was a report on ntel having a regulatory issue with the Nigerian Communications Commission as regards licensing. Has it been resolved?

The report of an issue with the NCC is completely inaccurate. We have been working with the NCC to achieve all the regulatory approvals that we need, and the work continues. But as far as being in the position to launch services to Nigerians, as specified in our licences, we have every single clearance that we need. Of course, we are discussing all sorts of things because it is our desire to lead commercially where our customers wish us to be the lead. We need to do those things that we perceive that our customers are looking for and we have seen working well in other jurisdictions. Of course, the objective of the NCC is to work with operators to facilitate those things and to make sure that they protect the interest of the customers. We constantly invite the NCC to push the boundaries in the way they do things, and in the way they draw certain lines. This will ensure that dialogue will always continue, but I wouldn’t say that there are issues. There is good dialogue, which is healthy, and it is the right one. I have worked with regulators in multiple jurisdictions and I find the engagements we have with the NCC to be among the best that I have ever experienced anywhere in the world. I am quite happy with our relationship there, and I am happy with the quality of dialogue. Let me make it completely clear that I am quite happy with the authorisations and commissions and licensing that we have today.

Are you planning to reintroduce fixed lines? Secondly, concerning the campaign for number reservations, how many lines have been reserved?

To take your last question first, we don’t wish to publish the number of customers that have reserved their lines. All that I can say is that it is in tens of thousands, but it is not a figure that we particularly want to publish. Concerning your first question, I can say that we are today selling fixed lines. It is in two enterprises and those are enterprises with premises that are in the vicinity adjacent to our nearly 200km of optical fibre, and that is the practical sensible thing to do. In order to draw down the large amounts of data on our base station, we need a good amount of fibre; that drove us to build the beginnings of a very big fibre network, and we have that very solid beginning today. In order to optimise that fibre network, we are taking enterprise customers and adding to that. It is not a big enough fibre network for us to serve a large number, but we will get there because our approach is total communications.

You said you were planning to invest about $1bn in the next four years. How do you intend to raise that capital?

As of now, we are speaking to investors and banks who are interested in the growth story of Africa. It is the case of so many companies still being very committed to investing in Africa, and we spoke to many fans that really want to put their money in this country. It is also the case of some presumptions about the telecoms industry, which we are busy dispelling. Some have been repeated at different forums and we find that when people understand the fundamentals and the underlined dynamics of this market, they are really very keen to play. We are quite happy with our funding plan today, but the reality is that people estimate the risk of operating successfully in Nigeria, and so we are now building our plan. We expect that when people see what we have done, they will take a much more aggressive view.

Do you see that coming from equities?

I don’t wish to redo the work of our financial advisers here, but certainly, we are open to investment discussions and to investors. The details of the actual structuring are way beyond my pay grade, but we are open to investors talking to us about making solid investments in a solid growth story.

You are about to go live and your data centre is not ready. How does that affect the company?

Our data centre has been ready for a month.

What is your interest in building a data centre? I thought you could have focused on core telecoms service delivery. What is in your interest?

The reality is that we do not set out to build tier data centres. What we set out to do is to give our customers an excellent service. Therefore, everything that contributes to that positively, we will build and nothing will be compromised in making sure we get to that end. Yes, it is true that there are other solutions out there, but as we inspect the ability of those solutions to deliver what we need, we have found them not quite good. So, it is a complex calculus that we have made, but in the end it has suited our purpose better to have our own data centre. Now, this is our first one, and it won’t be our only one. We will continue to review that question as we build additional data centres. Certainly, in this instance, for our first data centre, we absolutely need to have it built in the way we have done it. Of course, it is co-located with the cable landing standing, which is in itself a data centre which cannot be outsourced to a third party simply because it can be moved and we have no desire to let a third party run another business alongside our cable landing station for SAT 3. So, in some senses, there are some misgivings about this first one, which really prevent us from making any conclusion other than the tier III being with us

And channel partners?

We have got agreements with channel partners that are experienced and present today in the market. They do an enormous amount of business for the exciting players and we have agreements for them to work with us. We have done all the commercials with them and we are now putting final additions to the branding work between us – stores, vehicles, merchandising materials, Subscriber Identification Modules cards, SIM packaging, point of sale devices. We are working with them very vigorously to make sure we are prepared and we expect to be prepared in good order.

You once said that ntel had acquired some base stations and was already rolling them out. That goes against the traditions of telcos that are now outsourcing. Why did ntel take that decision?

I think I remember saying we acquired some cell sites in the transaction, but that was a mere 800 spread across the countries, so those are not going to be the ones we will principally use for this phase one rollout. But we have done bills, bought cheques and Helios towers. We will co-locate and we are, as I speak to you now, colocating on those sites.

Will consumers be charged for drop calls on your network?

I don’t think consumers are ever charged for a call that has been dropped. They obviously are charged for the portion of the call that was carried. You are asking a very detailed question about policy and I am not sure I am prepared to give a definite answer on that now. But what I would say is that we are going to go probably further than anyone has gone in terms of disclosing the performance and experience on our network, and we are going to set some very demanding targets internally and publish those too, to confirm our commitment to quality. When it comes to a promise, we will make sure we meet our promise and we will make sure we compensate when we fail to fulfil that promise. In relation to dropped calls, I would rather not say anything on that now. We are targeting building a network that will give customers an experience that will be world-beating in terms of the ability to hold calls and the ability to deliver a quality experience and service that is consistent.