Posted by BY RODNEY WEIDEMANN, ITWEB TELECOMS EDITOR on
The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) is set to push ahead with a controversial plan to allow fixed wireless access (FWA) providers to compete directly with mobile operators.
[Johannesburg, 27 May 2005] - The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) is set to push ahead with a controversial plan to allow fixed wireless access (FWA) providers to compete directly with mobile operators.
According to Balancing Act Africa, the NCC will face the wrath of the country's four cellular providers by pushing ahead with its contentious unified licence scheme.
Until now, FWAs have been limited by their licence conditions to only providing coverage of specific geographic areas, but the new proposals will see them allowed to offer countrywide roaming services as of February 2006.
This will offer them the opportunity to go head-to-head with the Nigerian mobile operators, whose call charges are six times higher on average.
The GSM operators are arguing that the new legislation could discourage investment in a sector that is already under-funded and may further weaken the industry, which it claims is already blighted by outdated facilities and high taxes.
On the other hand, the NCC claims the move should increase the take-up of services and has pointed to the 20-fold increase in GSM subscribers since competition was introduced as its justification.
Meanwhile, Nigeria's Netcom Africa has launched MyNetcom, a wireless broadband solution based on the UMTS TD-CDMA (3G) standard and targeted at individual PC users.
"It affords consumers the freedom of portability and ease of plug-and-play, supports peak download speeds of up to 3Mbps and can connect to any computer, laptop or mobile PC equipped with an Ethernet LAN network port," says marketing executive officer, Chris Okelu.
In other Africa news, Senegal's minister of post, telecommunications and ICT, Joseph Ndong, has announced that the government will issue tenders by the middle of June seeking a second national operator and a third mobile operator for the country.