•Tells DMBs services not free, asks telcos to be more innovative
•Operators lament fall in CAPEX, foreign direct investments

The Minister of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy, Dr. Bosun Tijani, has sought the understanding of Deposit Money Banks (DMBs) in resolving the N120 billion Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) debt impasse.

Tijani stated this when telecommunications operators paid him a visit in Abuja at the weekend.

The telcos under the aegis of Association of Licensed Telecommunications Operators of Nigeria (ALTON) led by its Chairman, Gbenga Adebayo, had sought the minister’s intervention on the matter, which is going into almost four years now. Excerpts of the meeting were made available to The Guardian, yesterday.

The minister, while responding, said: “It is work to be done together. Innovations have to play a key role in resolving the issues. The banks should not expect free service as there are costs to every service rendered.”

Tijani, who said President Bola Tinubu is passionate about technology and that the sector’s challenges are surmountable, decried the lack of use of data to resolve the problems.

“It is not just about mentioning the Right of Way (RoW) as a challenge but all associated issues connected to it like the dig once, unify ducts, among others must also be looked into. There is a need to have independent parties look into the problems and the benefits to gather intelligence on resolving them,” he stated.

On this, Tijani plans to form two independent think tank groups and implored ALTON to work with him to achieve this, stressing that there was need to work together to find an approach to checkmate damage of infrastructure in the country.

The minister told ALTON that the sector is not innovative enough in the attempt to reach the unreached people in the rural areas and unlock the services for a lot of people through technology.

Earlier in their submission, the telecoms operators alerted Tijani to the fact that they have continued to encounter strong macroeconomic headwinds, which have occasioned tough operating conditions, leading to a decline in CAPEX (Domestic) and Foreign Direct (Capital Inflow) investments into the industry by 30.37 per cent and 46.9 per cent respectively between 2021 and 2022.

ALTON submitted that a number of teething investment-impacting causal factors need to be definitively addressed to help deepen investment with the overall objective of driving increased CAPEX deployment for overall QoS improvement in line with the targets of the Strategic Plan to achieve 50 per cent improvement in telephony service by the end of 2024.

The telcos reminded the minister that ICT serves as an ‘enabler’ for all other critical infrastructure and infrastructure sectors vital to national productivity and security.

According to them, to function optimally, telecommunications infrastructure relies on a complex and interconnected support ecosystem consisting of fiber, satellites, towers, base stations, switches, data centers, among others, which need to function uninterrupted for delivery of optimal QoS.

“There have, however, been incidences of adverse cross-sectoral impact on QoS arising from damage to such infrastructure due to excavation during civil works such as road construction, deliberate/negligent vandalisation and sabotage as well as theft of cable, equipment, and supplies such as diesel, generators and batteries, undue delay in issuance of site approvals for new towers/base stations as well as harassment of staff /site access denial by state/local agencies to enforce levy payments,” ALTON stated.

Adebayo told the minister that telecoms operators currently pay at least 49 different taxes and levies, stressing that additionally, members continued to bear the brunt of multiple taxation and coerced compliance with tax and levy demands that have no legal basis by sub-nationals, stressing that this threatens investment, sustainability and industry growth.

“Instances include – exorbitant RoW fees, increases under the Finance Act 2023 (such as upward review of Tertiary Education Trust Fund Tax from 2.5 per cent to three per cent, imposition of Value Added Tax on cell towers (Base Stations), imposition of import levy on goods, removal of capital allowance on telecommunications goods and services under Section 32 of the amended Companies Income Tax Act), amongst others;

“The foregoing state of affairs is further compounded by the increase in Legislative Bills seeking to impose new taxes and levies on private organizations (including ALTON’s members) at the National and State Houses of Assemblies,” he stated.