NATCOMS calls on service providers to increase base station capacities

The National Association of Telecommunications Subscribers on Sunday called on service providers in the country to increase the capacities of their base stations to accommodate their subscriber base.
Chief ‘Deolu Ogunbanjo, the President of NATCOMS, told the News Agency of Nigeria in Lagos that increasing the capacities of the base stations entailed the building of more infrastructure by the operators.
Ogunbanjo said such would ease the current situation where all the networks were congested and the subscribers had to put up with poor quality services.
He said: “Currently, the entire network operators in the country are guilty of this.
“Even Etisalat that used to be slightly better, is now very congested and their subscribers are now complaining.
“For the operators to serve subscribers better, they have to understand that all subscribers on their networks must be served properly by way of ensuring that they provide enough capacity.
“They have to provide more infrastructure in terms of capacity to accommodate their subscriber base.
“Poor quality of service is as a result of congestion on the networks.
“Britain is having about 70,000 base stations.
“Nigeria has below 25,000, which is grossly inadequate.”
According to Ogunbanjo, the subscriber base of telecoms companies in Nigeria easily outnumbers the infrastructure capacity of the telecoms operators.
He called on the Nigerian Communications Commission to suspend the issuance of any Subscriber Identification Module numbering plan to the network providers, as they presently did not have the capacity to accommodate such numbers.
NAN.