“Equatel On A Mission In Equalising Opportunities Through Telecom”

There is much debate concerning what type of service provider will emerge in the future telecom industry but whatever model emerges Equatel Telecoms has set out to create a dynamic platform that will grant unhindered access to quality telecommunications services to the underserved population of Nigerians, premised on a value chain that includes affordability and a robust technology. In this Interview with Mr. Henry Onaga, Chief Executive Officer and Suleiman Bello, executive director at EQUATEL Telecoms spoke exclusively to mobileworld team.

Qs: Can you tell us what you do at EQUATEL Telecommunications Limited?

Ans: Equatel is a new company in Nigeria that intends to pioneer the new GSM SIM public pay phone. The technology we intend to deploy in Nigeria is actually a unique one that has been hardly tried anywhere, but it offers some unique potential for the Nigerian market, especially for those living in the rural areas, who probably have not had access to telecommunications. It is a GSM SIM Card based technology that actually gives the subscriber a unique identity such that their telephone user experience approximates that of subscribers that use handsets. EQUATEL is presently being driven by some well established Nigerian entrepreneurs in collaboration with EQUATEL UK LIMITED who are our technical partners and equity stakeholders.

Qs: What are the challenges you envisage when you launch your new service?

Ans: Basically, the initial challenge that we foresee is that of change. You know human beings are naturally averse to change. Because this is actually a unique technology that has not been used before, definitely, there would be a lot of questions by subscribers. Secondly, because it is equally new to the operators, there have been some bottlenecks here
and there, in terms of getting the operators themselves ready to collaborate with us on this project. The challenges we envisage are rather similar or typical to those any new business will face in Nigeria. They are that of security, lack of infrastructure and the challenge of a hugely illiterate semi urban and rural populace. But again, we have anticipated that, and we have made our platform to be user friendly such that people who are barely literate, and who can recognise figures can use our terminals.

Qs: Looking at the current situation of GSM in Nigeria, it seems the subscribers have lost hope with the operators in terms of call drops and inability to terminate calls. Do you see that happening with EQUATEL SIM pay phone?

Ans: Well, my take on this is that EQUATEL SIM public pay phone will generally approximate what you have with the GSM sector, because we are going to ride on the back bone of GSM operators; i.e. we are going to piggyback on their backbone and network facilities, and if their services are not good, it is going to affect us substantially. But because we have taken time to develop a technology that substantially takes care of some inherent disadvantages that are found in ordinary handsets, I envisage that we would not have as much problems as the handset users. Take for instance, in terms of reception, our unique pay phone have some advantages in terms of reception because we have strong antennas that boost reception. Also, our phones are able to receive signals in both rugged terrains and distant locations where ordinarily handsets may not be able to receive signals. To that extent, I think it will not be as bad and again, in terms of noise level and distortion in channels, it will definitely be lower than that of ordinary handset users. So the voice clarity on our telephones will be a lot better than you have, using a handset. With this, I think the Nigerian subscribers will be in for a better experience when we finally roll out.

Qs. Currently the NCC puts the subscribers base at 39 million, what market share are you targeting. How many subscribers do you hope to sign on before the end of 2008?

Ans: I think this is actually the major strength of EQUATEL public pay phone.  We have a model that creates a matrix of subscribers, i.e. a cluster of subscribers. For example, one terminal can serve as many as 2000 subscribers and we intend to deploy close to 50, 000 terminals, within three to four years. And if you use a multiplier of 2,000 subscribers, you will begin to imagine that up to a hundred million people can be on our network. But again, the beauty is that for the GSM operators that we are partnering with, it does not necessarily have the same consequence in terms of capacity because our
user model creates a sequence such that if we have probably 50,000 terminals out there, you can only have 50, 000 simultaneous subscribers using it at a time. The other 100 million minus 50,000 are virtually on queue. They are subscribers that will take their turns to use the equipment. So in terms of resource utilisation and optimisation, the GSM operators will definitely see a lot of value addition in our operations.

Qs: So far, what is the response of the general public to your product?
Ans: The product is still at a stage I will refer to as an embryonic stage. It has not yet been unveiled to the general public such that we will begin to have and record their experience. But again, there has been what I will call test marketing, and the reception and perception has been very wonderful and fantastic. If we draw from that, I can tell you that it will be a runaway success. People will virtually queue up and jump on one another to have this service.

Qs: Which of the GSM operators are you collaborating with?
Ans: We are going to take off with MTN because of a plethora of factors that we have put into consideration. Coming closely on the heels of MTN will be CELTEL, who are already discussing with us and whose pitch we have won. Celtel is warming up to introduce our services next year, and it appears that within the first and second quarter of next year, a lot of activities will be on going with both networks.
Qs: Are you collaborating with the CDMA companies?

Ans: Because the CDMA operators have not really taken a quantum leap in terms of deployment or rolling out nationwide, we have only considered them for another
phase in our road map. We are going to start with voice and simple applications like SMS, voice messages, etc. Some heavy data applications will come later, but they are all in our road map. The good news is that our subscribers will eventually enjoy every facility you can possibly have on any other GSM telecommunications platform available in the Nigerian Market.

Qs. What relationship do you have with the Nigerian Communication Commission, NCC?
Ans: The NCC has already licensed us to provide the services we are embarking on, and I am sure and very positive that when we roll out, NCC will definitely breath a sigh of relief; because most of the problems in the sector even in terms of reaching the rural
populace which they have been spending so much money on, will be a thing of the past as they will see a company that will offer them that vehicle at almost no cost. We are looking forward to receiving strong support both from NCC and the Ministry of Communication because what they are planning to achieve with mega billions of naira, we are going to offer them the same platform at a more efficient rate and at a shorter time. We are going to make these services available to Nigerians soon. Therefore, we hope they will avail us of the Universal Service Provision Fund (USPF) when the time comes. This is because we are actually going to do it and we are going to do it right and the regulator will take the entire accolades for the good job.

Qs. What are your plans to ensure that your facilities across the country are properly secured?
Ans: Strategically, we have come up with a deployment model that tends to take care of some basic security issues. Our policy is that we would not deploy on the highway. We are going to deploy in what we have described as controlled environments. And controlled
environment simply defined (functionally), as we put it, are places where you have presence of people 24 hours. Where we do not have presence of people 24 hours, our terminals are plug and play devices such that you can actually make it semi mobile. At the end of your operation for the day, you can unplug and take it home and the next day you bring it back. So, we believe that with that we will not have security issues.

Qs. What plans do you have to recruit security personnel to ensure that your facilities are well secured and to guide against your facilities being vandalised?

Ans: Basically, we have taken a lot of things into consideration. When we say we are going to locate our facilities in purely controlled environment, what we mean is that we will locate it in public places that have 24 hours security. Secondly, we are trying to develop a strategy that will bring in tow, these umbrella business centres and people who have the quest and hunger to become entrepreneurs. What we mean is that we have already enlisted some dealers who have been empowered to develop sub-dealers and these sub dealers will have responsibility for designated terminals. So, these clusters of terminals would define their territories for selling our airtime. For those of them who have been given this responsibility, they will equally have a quasi authority to ensure that these terminals are safe and unencumbered from either vandals or mischief-makers. How it will work is that for those of them who believe that it is not very safe, when they close work, they can take it in and bring it out the next day. Then, for a more formal and functional organization, take for instance an office environment, like this where you have 24 hours security, It would be arranged for
such organisations to provide security for the facility. It will be part of the assets of the organisation. Those to be located in schools and motor parks will be handed over to constituted authorities in those places such that they will develop a regime of security that
will ensure that these things are properly managed and handled. In the motor parks we would go through the designated Unions. We are going to achieve this by not just giving them responsibilities, but also what we would like to call carrots, by creating revenue centres for them, since they will be earning revenue from the air-time they will sell to subscribers. This will make them to see the facilities as their own, as they will have a stake in it. Therefore, they will be ready to go the extra miles to protect it.

Qs. How will your tariff look like?

Ans: At the moment, the issue of tariff is still being held close to the chest. It is strategic. But one thing I can assure you is that we are going to be mindful of our target segment. We are not here to exploit the market.

Qs. Will people see EQUATEL as being friendly in terms of pricing?

Ans: Like I said earlier, there is a lot of collaboration between us and the GSM service providers and we cannot be different from what is presently prevalent in the industry. Although, we have an understanding with them that we are actually targeting the low income segment of the market and by so doing, for our products to appeal to that market segment, they must be competitive in terms of pricing. We intend to benchmark the business centre operators that offer cheaper services than handset users at present. So this gives you an idea of where we are heading to but one thing we are sure of is that customers will heave a sigh of relief when we unveil our prices.

Qs: where do you see EQUATEL in the next five years?

Ans: I see EQUATEL as a company that will in the next five years say we have come, we have seen, we have conquered. We are going to bestride the pay phone sector like a colossus and we are going to move with such a frenetic speed that will make any intending player in
this sector to either loose hope or come in at its peril. And we are going to combine it with a lot of social responsibility. We are going to get people to feel a stake in this business. We are going to work hand in gloves with our subscribers and we will give
them a sense of pride and uniqueness about using our products. We envisage that there is going to be a convergence in our platform such that it will not be entirely and strictly class stratified such that people who have handsets and who could ordinarily afford higher
tariffs will still have a flair to use our services; especially because of the kind of convenience we will offer to subscribers and the seamless approach we would bring to bear our service delivery.

Qs. could you give us a brief profile of yourself?
Ans: I am Henry Onaga. I have been around for quite a while in the corporate circles. I trained primarily as an accountant and got my MBA in Marketing. Quite early
in my career, I was entrusted with doing things that are novel and challenging. I started with the financial services sector with Credit Alliance Financial Services as one of their analyst, later I moved to the Leventis Group as a manager. They sent me to their Breweries Division, and I managed the Sales Administration Department. The Head of sales Administration Department was a senior management position but they had to start me as a middle manager
because I was relatively quite young and they were not too confident of what I could do. Eventually when within one year, I established myself and rewrote the history of the organization in terms of anchoring the major units, the warehousing units, the depot operations, logistics and transport and Direct Sales Unit. First of all for the first time, I was able to give an accurate account of all the stock items in an organization that had operated for 15 years without being able to reconcile their stock. Because of the feat that I achieved, the Depot operations that were closed, was re-opened. When my General Manager challenged me to come up with an operational manual, it was promptly delivered. I headed a committee of three managers comprising the Internal Auditor, Commercial Manager and Myself. We came up with a manual that is still operational till date.
Again, because of the controls that I established we re-opened the depots that were closed as a result of the
losses and thefts occurring there and the Depot Operations led to an unprecedented increase in sales as our sales shot up by over 300% (percent). This earned me very quick promotions. After then I moved on to make my impact in some other vital sectors of the economy, which included Advertising and Oil & Servicing. Prior to joining EQUATEL, I worked as the Managing Director, Cell Communications Limited, one of the Private Telecommunications Operators that were licensed during the General Sani Abacha’s regime that set out to deploy CDMA, after joining them in one of the industry’s most outstanding and daring recruitments, having arrived the industry at the very top as a green horn, with no previous industry experience.

Qs. How do you relax?
Ans: Previously, when I had less work to do, sometimes I played lawn tennis and I try to do some serial networking, hanging out with some good fellows. Also, I move in the circle of people whom I consider very positive, I am at my best when I get into discussion with people who look at the bright side of life.

 

SULEIMAN BELLO is the executive director at equatel

Qs. How do you hope to manage the customer care aspect of the business?

Ans: Basically, our customer care approach will be in two ways. One we are going to facilitate the activities of GSM operators that are going to run with us to be able to handle customer issues. Because we would not forget that primarily, our subscribers will be their subscribers. They are going to be CELTEL or MTN subscribers. The first level platform of customer care will be with the operators and then at the super customer care level, we will give support to operators, and the beauty of it is that our management system has come up
with a technology that is highly diagnostic such that before any subscriber complains, we would have known.

Also, our terminals mirror the network operations of the GSM operators and are even able to identify and tell us the status of the network. So, while we support them to satisfy our customers, we are equally going to support the GSM operators to tell them where they are going wrong and where they are having problems. Our network has the capacity to tell the operators how many times they have run either on main power supply or alternative power supply. We can tell them when their network is down as a result of some extraneous situations. So, it is going to be a symbiotic relationship between us and the GSM
operators. We are more likely to be at the background to support the GSM operators to have an efficient customer care system.

Qs. Are you going to have a separate customer care unit different from that of the GSM operators?

Ans: What we are going to have  in-house in EQUATEL, is what we call NOC, i.e. a monitoring unit that will be there to resolve any issue that will be coming from the customer desk of the operator. We are not going to maintain a subscriber/customer care centre, that would
be duplicating functions and it may create gaps. We are going to synchronise our support with that of operators.

QS: How optimistic are you that EQUATEL will do well in the market?

Ans: I strongly believe that EQUATEL is going to make a lot of difference in Nigeria. EQUATEL has what it takes. It is a company that has vision and mission. Looking at the telecommunications sector in Nigeria from the NITEL days to the present dispensation, you
will come to realise that there has been so many gaps in the past of which one of them is reaching out to the rural areas. I think EQUATEL has what it takes to bridge this gap.

Qs: Since your major targets are the underserved and the rural population, are you soliciting for government support in terms of deployment?

Ans: There are some levels of support from the government that we anticipate already. We have applied to the government to be one of the beneficiaries of the Universal Service Provision Fund, USPF. This is because we strongly believe that our business qualifies to benefit from this fund. We are hopeful that we will be one of the beneficiaries.