3G in Nigeria soon,3 what?

The Nigeria communication commission (NCC) recently announced that third generation (3G) mobile communication technology will be launched in Nigeria soon.
This announcement was made by the executive vice chairman of the NCC, Engr. Ernest Ndukwe last week. Also speaking on a Nigerian television Authority (NTA) network interview the minister for communication, chief Cornelious Adebayo, said that the 3G networks will enable Nigerians to experience more efficient data services, which will make it possible for Nigeria to experience better multimedia services.


Indeed the news of Nigeria going 3G is good. The basic GSM operates at about 14.4kbit/s, although with General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) this figure increases to about 170kbit/s at favourable conditions. However, with this limited bandwidth, voice remains the dominant service offered by most networks in Nigeria. Although GPRS, most especially through the glo mobile network, now delivers mobile internet and other multimedia service but it is still limited in bandwidth.
3G promises higher bandwidth.

Presently it is possible to deliver wireless broadband access to a lapto0p via a data card. The speed of such a connection with 3G can be more than 350kbit/s. This means that with 3G pictures, videos and other heavy documents can be downloaded with laptops or mobile phones more efficiently 350kbit/s is significantly larger than the data transfer speed of most cyber cafes in Nigeria. Higher quality television programme can be delivered to a mobile phone with 3G.

However, how ready is Nigeria for 3G? With most network operators still struggling to deliver higher quality voice services demanded by Nigerians I will say we are not ready yet. More than four years after the switch on of GSM networks in Nigeria, Nigerians are still complaining about the quality of services. Some of the complaints include; high tariffs; credit being deducted without delivering any service; networks going off at anytime, in fact some networks are known to go off anytime it rains; most networks do not have a transparent billing system; and so on.



To my opinion the only network currently ready to deliver 3G services in Nigeria is the glo-mobile network. Glo-mobile have been delivering high quality voice and data services via the GPRS system, in Nigeria since 2003. Going by developments all over the world, the 3G standard that will be deployed in Nigeria will be the Universal Mobile Telecommunication s system (UMTS). This is because UMTS has been shown to interoperate well with GSM-GPRS.
It is hoped that the unified license regime will be applied in deploying 3G in Nigeria.

Nigeria should emulate the United States, where new licenses were not auctioned for 3G, rather existing operators were allowed to use their existing bandwidth to deploy 3G. This will introduce innovation in the industry and reduce the cost of deployment.

However, internationally recognized network operators, like T-mobile, Vodaphone, Hutchison and Tele-2, should be attracted into Nigeria by the government to deploy 3G networks. These operators will inject the much-needed capital, which is required to improve the service quality and give Nigerians more choices.

My final analysis is that Nigeria is not ready for 3G now, but with proper planning, in drawing out the framework; greater capital injection in the industry and a better standard of living in Nigeria, we will be ready before 2009.