The Lagos State Government and the Association of Licensed Telecommunications Operators of Nigeria (ALTON) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) specifically aimed at reducing challenges hindering the rollout of telecommunications infrastructure in the state.
The MoU will not also see the removal of Right of Way (RoW) bottlenecks faced by service providers in the state, but will also check cases of multiple regulation; taxation, vandalism among others.
At the formal signing-in of the MoU documents in Lagos, weekend, Adebiyi Mabadeje, commissioner for science and technology in the state, said Lagos was ready to support the growth of telecommunications services, stressing that there was need to accelerate growth of ICT in the state and in Nigeria, as whole.
Mabadeje, who said Lagos still needed more investments across all sectors, noted that the telecommunications arm of the ICT (Information Communications Technology) industry must be supported for more growth and economic transformation.
He explained that the new agreement will see 85 percent slash in the cost of getting RoW permit in the state, stressing that this was targeted at encouraging telecoms operators to further invest in Lagos. He however, urged them to also abide by the rules and regulations.
“The agreement is a tighter handshake between the state and ALTON. It is a win-win situation for both parties. The state believed that there is need to improve service quality because the real users are the consumers. We believe that getting this done would accelerate so many developments.
“As you know, the state government is on the verge of making Lagos a Smart City and so many things are involve. ICT, telecommunications are critical to making this a reality. So the state is supporting the needed course to getting this done. We have reduced our RoW rate by as much as 85 percent. So many other things are still in the offing,” Mabadeje said.
Speaking on behalf of ALTON, Gbenga Adebayo, the chairman, said the agreement, which takes effect immediately will see Lagos experience best of service within the next six and 12 months from now, further adding that he envisaged that permit approval, which before now takes up to a year and above before it is granted should now take between a day and four weeks.
Adebayo, an engineer, said the agreement would see telecommunications operators upgrades their facilities; boost the network capacity, rollout infrastructure in the state and deliver the best of service on their networks.
Calling on other states of the Federation to follow suit, the ALTON boss said by the agreement, Lagos government has joined in the ownership of telecommunications infrastructure in the state, “by so doing, they will put our infrastructure in mind whenever they want to build roads so that we don’t have cuts on them, among others.
“We appreciate Lagos state because ALTON has come to recognized that the greatest challenge to infrastructure roll-out in Nigeria has been RoW issues. But Lagos has settled that for us, we hoped that other states would follow suit.
“ALTON supports Lagos becoming a digital colony through the Smart City project and we are going to cooperate and collaborate to getting this done.”
It will be recalled that this agreement started with the facilitation on December 3, 2013 by Omobola Johnson, the minister of communications, when she met with Governor Babatunde Fashola, where the governor admitted that good infrastructure rollout and deployment was in the best interest of the residents of the state. Fashola then, reinforced that it was not the wish of the state to prevent operators from rolling out.
“We need you to rollout probably more than you need it. But we do not need it at the expense of our roads or lives of the people. Infrastructure must be built to very high standards,” he said.
By: Ben Uzor Jr
