Operators deploy 80,938km of fibre optics cable system for services

• BTS installments hit 30,176
• GSM players record 32.6b calls 

THE quest for expanded service offerings has resulted in the deployment of about 80, 893km of fibre optic cable systems by the telecommunications operators including the (GSM and CDMA/Fixed telephony operators in the country.

Fiber optic refers to the medium and the technology associated with the transmission of information as light impulses along a glass or plastic wire or fiber.

Fiber optic wire carries much more information than conventional copper wire and is far less subject to electromagnetic interference.    Indeed, the figure, which was as at December 2014, was compiled by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) in a document titled: “2014 Year End Subscriber/Network Data Report For Telecommunications Operating Companies in Nigeria.”

The document disclosed that 64,433 km of the fibre optic was on land while 16, 506 km was submarine.    MTN had the largest on land with 19, 200km; Glo had on land 10,869 km and submarine of 9,800 km.

Airtel had deployed 6,314 km, EMTS (Etisalat) had 4300km while Multilinks, Visafone, MTN Fixed, 21ST Century and ipNX had deployed 5,789km, 43km, 12,518km, 5000km and 400km of On -Fibre optics respectively.

Fibre optics for other category of operators, according to the NCC, included the Interconnect Clearing House Limited, which had a total of 18.7km, which increased from 7.5km reported in 2013.

Defcom Technologies Limited and Layer3 had a  total  of  30km  and  161km  respectively  as  at  the period under review while Tycil Telecoms  reported using MTN SIM cards as at December 2013 and December 2014.

Although, the country is said to be in need of about 60, 000 Base Transceiver Stations (BTS) to bridge the gap in service quality, the report noted an increase of about 6.6 per cent in the installation, adding that the operators (GSM) added about 1,887 new ones to move the figure from 28, 289 in 2013 to 30,176 at December last year.

Further analysis showed that MTN, Glo, Airtel and Etisalat had 12, 557; 6,677; 6,187 and 4,756 BTS spread across the country.    The document informed that the installed capacity of the mobile network operators as at December last year was 275, 594, 468 from 248, 353, 725 reported in the same period of 2013.

Meanwhile, the report also informed that from January to December 2014, GSM players recorded 32.2 billion outgoing traffic or phone calls on their networks of GSM operators, between January 2014 and December 2014, was 32.2 billion, while incoming calls was 32.6 billion.

Expectedly, MTN reported the highest outgoing traffic of over 10.07 billion and the highest incoming traffic of 15.69 billion for the period under review.

Globacom came second on the chart with 7.6 billion outgoing phone calls on its network and 5.06 billion incoming phone calls. Airtel was third with 7.04 billion outgoing phone calls with 6.9 billion incoming traffic while Etisalat came fourth with 7.4 billion outgoing calls with 4.9 billion outgoing phone calls.

According to the report, total outgoing traffic for the mobile Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) operators and fixed telephone operators as at December 2014 was 2.18 billion while total incoming was 1.81 billion.

Also, MTN Fixed network reported the highest outgoing traffic of 1.39 billion and the highest incoming traffic of 1.47 billion for the period under review.