Govt resolves NCC, NESREA feud over telecoms facilities’ control

TRUCE might have finally been reached in the tussle between the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) and the National Environmental Standards and Regulations Enforcement Agency (NESREA) over regulation of base stations and other telecommunications services in the country.

The Guardian learnt yesterday that the Minister of Communications Technology, Mrs. Omobola Johnson and her counterpart in the Ministry of Environment, Mrs. Hadiza Ibrahim Mailafia, met last week to end the feud between the two agencies of their ministries.

About a month ago, NESREA and NCC were involved in a regulatory tussle over sealing and unsealing of BTS in Abuja and some other parts of the country.

According to a source, under the truce, NESREA would not seal any base station henceforth while it would also not regard as offending, any telecommunications mast, which had been completed and met the five metres setback to residential property as prescribed by the NCC regulations.

The source said, however, that all new base stations to be built must observe the current NESREA’s prescription of 10 metres setback until NCC and NESREA regulations are harmonised and the impact of this prescription experienced along the way.

The Guardian also learnt that the duration for carrying out the Environmental Assessment Impact (EIA) has been reduced from 18 months to 12 weeks, as the old regime is considered unhelpful to development of telecommunications.

Chairman of the Association of Licensed Telecoms Operators of Nigeria, Mr. Gbenga Adebayo, had lamented the delay in the process at which telecommunications firms were made to pass through in getting the EIA documents for rolling out their infrastructure.

ALTON had said the delay in getting the EIA documents by the operators stifled faster roll-out of BTS infrastructure, especially in areas not yet covered by telecommunications services.

He noted that the number of base stations so far deployed by the operators were too few compared to what obtains in other countries and far below what Nigeria requires for efficient and ubiquitous services provision.

“There are currently about 20,000 base station sites in Nigeria serving a population of over 150 million people. In comparison, there were approximately 53,300 base station sites in the United Kingdom at the end of 2010 serving a population of just over 60 million people. The latter figure could rise in years to come.

“For Nigerian networks to provide best in class services compared to the UK, Europe and other countries, it is expected that the industry will need to roll out additional base station sites in excess of 50,000 nationwide.”

Meanwhile, NCC has reiterated its commitment towards ensuring improved and competitive telecommunications landscape in the country, stressing that there is no going back on issuing queries to defaulting operators in the areas of quality of service.

The Director of Publicity at NCC, Mr. Tony Ojobo, stated this in Abuja at a meeting between the regulator and the sanctioned telecommunications operators. He said the Commission would not be cajoled by any group of persons that may want to question its rationale for taking the decisions it took on the operators.