Project Background

Over the last 20 years, Nigeria has seen an upsurge in the development of Telecommunications in the country. The transformation grew from just over 1 million subscribers in the year 2000 to well over 180 million in August 2020. In that same period, the number of Nigerians without access to telecommunication servers reduced from 93% to 20%.
Unfortunately, the Network penetration coverage of over 70% of Nigeria has been limited to the urban and suburban areas, leaving many rural communities “cut off”, without access to telecommunication services. As expected, despite the government’s intervention through NCC’s Universal Service Provision initiative, most of the MNO’s have focused their base stations and coverage in urban areas, away from the low ARPU rural communities.
With the net revenues of passive collocation gradually falling, as well as an advancement in the upcoming trend in the world of telecommunications of wholesale networking, i.e. “network as a service”, existing towercos are currently using this opportunity to extend their current forte. These companies are now partnering with the MNO’s by investing in providing both active and passive infrastructure in these rural communities.
It is clear that over time, this “Network-as-a-Service” phenomenon would soon extend to suburban and urban areas, as competition in current markets intensifies and MNO’s are compelled to share revenue risks. It is therefore important that the current towercos begin to engage In this rural telephony initiative, as the future of their business will be largely shaped by this!