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Association seeks support for regional telecoms operators(CAJ News Agency Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) THE Association of Licensed Telecommunications Operators (ALTON) has urged government to encourage the emergence of regional and community network operators as a way of addressing poor quality of service (QoS) in the industry. The association said the emergence of community and regional operators would reduce the over dependence on Global System for Mobile communications (GSM) networks which had resulted in consistent quality of service issues. Speaking at a forum in Lagos, ALTON Chairman, Engr Gbenga Adebayo, said that community and regional networks can be driven by policy. "Today, our operators are national in outlook, by definition; telecom is all networks in one network because we have one national network. Different operators are contributing members of this national network. " If our policies encourage people to become regional, state or local operators, then there will be room for everybody to play," he said. Speaking further, he said, "In the area of technology, we need to understand that technology is expensive as telecom is all about volume, so, players try to compete with less expensive technology due to high volume to face the struggle. The best of this would be, if there are policies to direct people to say you can be a regional operator or local operator, then you will have people that can deploy technology for a community with 1 000 inhabitants using CDMA or other technology and then connected to the national network, people will be comfortable and happy with their service provider." Adebayo noted that community networks, from his experience, were the most efficient and could make significant impact if players in the sector were encouraged. "When I and they know us. Today, everybody is speaking to a pole that personalized service is no longer there. Community networks give better personalized service that you can't find in national network; this is understandable because if you are dealing with 10,000 subscribers compared to the other operator dealing with 20 million subscribers operational intricacies are not the same," he added. |