Former Emir of Kano, Lamido Sanusi, has gone back to school. According to Premium Times, he has enrolled for a doctoral program in Islamic Law at the University of London, United Kingdom. The ex-king has since relocated to London to hit the books.
I like PhD and I recommend it: it is one of the best career insurance policies you can take, young people. That thing works wonders especially if earned from a great school; it opens doors. Those rich dudes have money and they really respect that appendage.
Certainly, Lamido does not need it for anything. He is probably bored and needs to invest his time in something tasking. I wish him good luck. And ABU Zaria Law should have an offer ahead!
By 2025, subscribers of mobile phone are expected to reach about 1o billion according to the International Telecommunications Union. The body cites increasing affordability of smartphones and accelerating technological adoption in sub-Saharan Africa. In Nigeria, these factors are not exceptions to the growth of mobile phone users and increase in subscribers of MTN, Glo, Airtel and 9Mobile that have been the key players in the mobile telecommunication service sector over the years.
However, the growth of the sector seems not to translate to delivering sustainable quality of service to the users across the country. Everyday, users and stakeholders are expressing mixed quality of service outcomes, calling on the concerned stakeholders to do more for users. Recently, MTN, the key player according to subscriber base, had a breakdown for days. The breakdown led to poor call connectivity and data usage among the subscribers. As the debate continues, this piece examines four quality of service metrics of the Nigerian Communications Commission. The metrics has a significant number of positive and negative performances of the four dominant brands between May, 2020 and April 2021.
The metrics include Commission Dropped Call Rate, Standalone Dedicated Control Channel Congestion, Traffic Control Channel and Call Set Up Rate.
According to the regulatory body, “Standalone Dedicated Control Channel Congestion is used in the GSM system to provide a reliable connection for signalling and SMS (Short Message Service) messages. A dropped call is a call that is prematurely terminated before being released normally by either the caller or the called party (i.e., the call is dropped before the exchange of Released Message “RL_M” and Released Complete Message “RLC_M” in the signaling flow). Traffic Control Channels (TCCH) are responsible for transferring control information between mobiles and the BTS.”
Interconnectivity of the Measured Quality of Service
One of the surprising insights from our analysis is that the four brands performed well in 11 months out of the 12 months of data produced by the Nigeria Communication Commission. Throughout the 11 months, MTN was better than other service providers. Further analysis of the performance using average approach reveals that performance within the call set up rate and dropped call rate connected by 8.9% while 1.8% was recorded for connection between Standalone Dedicated Control Channel Congestion and dropped call rate 1.8%. It was 69.9% for traffic control channel and dropped call rate. These results indicate that the four brands struggled in their quest of providing better service to users during the 12-month period. For instance, the positive association of call set up rate and dropped call rate signifies that the more the brands prepared better call set ups for their subscribers, the more the subscribers experienced call droppings. It also suggests that subscribers had bitter experience when they replaced calling with sending messages.
Our analysis further reveals that MTN’s call set up performance seems not to help subscribers to experience quality service while calling because one percent of ensuring better call set up increased the extent to which users experienced call droppings during the period of analysis. On a surprising note, our analyst discovered that Airtel seems to have advantage over other brands in terms of the degree to which its ability to ensure and sustain call set up enhanced better calling experience [see Exhibit 1].
Exhibit 1: Place of Call Set Up Rate in Select Quality of Service Metrics
Source: Nigerian Communication Commission, 2021; Infoprations Analysis, 2021
Competitive Advantage in the Midst of Quality of Service Challenge
In our experience, we found a clear manifestation of QoS strategic game among the brands. Our analysis points out that the better the MTN’s QoS, the better the Glo’s QoS as well. This is also found for Glo and Airtel, Airtel and 9Mobile. However, the better the Glo’s QoS the less was 9Mobile’s QoS. This is also discovered for MTN and 9Mobile. Clearly, MTN seems to reinforce its market leadership by competing favourably with other brands. In all the metrics, are there differences? Our analyst asked this and found mixed surprising insights.
For the dropped call rate metric, there was no strong difference between MTN and Glo. A strong difference exists between MTN and Airtel. In this regard, Airtel was better than MTN in terms of less dropped calls. We also found a strong difference among MTN and 9Mobile [9Mobile is better in terms of less dropped calls], MTN and Glo [Glo is better than MTN], MTN and Airtel [MTN is better], and MTN and 9Mobile [MTN is better]. Analysis of difference for Standalone Dedicated Control Channel Congestion metric also reveals a strong difference between what MTN and Airtel recorded during the 12-months [however, Airtel is better], MTN and Glo [Glo is better], MTN and 9Mobile [9Mobile is better]. For traffic control, a strong difference exists between MTN and Airtel [however, Airtel is better], MTN and Glo [however, MTN is better], and MTN and 9Mobile [MTN is better].
As a need-driven sector, the conversation around ensuring better quality of service by the GSM brands is a continuous one between the service providers, subscribers and the regulatory body in Nigeria. This will ensure that the users have value for their hard-earned money in the course of meeting their communication needs. It is equally important that service users understand and use the service complaint framework put in place by the regulatory body. While the brands are advised to pay more attention to infrastructural deficiencies that contribute to their inability to fulfil subscribers’ telecommunication yearnings, the NCC should continue to be vigilant in ensuring that services promised by the telecommunication brands are the services delivered.
Shrugging off months of decline that saw half of its value wiped off, the cryptocurrency market is now worth more than $3 trillion.
Tesla’s CEO, Elon Musk’s decision to part ways with bitcoin earlier in the year, triggered a decline that resulted in mass selloffs. It was exacerbated by the crackdown on cryptocurrency in China. Now, a wave of new factors is driving a rally that has witnessed bitcoin and ether beat the all-time highs they set earlier in the year.
Bloomberg highlighted some of the factors driving the bull market.
The little more than a decade old market for digital assets has already roughly quadrupled from its 2020 year-end value, as investors have gotten more comfortable with established tokens such as Bitcoin and networks like Ethereum and Solana continue to upgrade and attract new functionality. Excitement about the possibilities of decentralized finance and non-fungible tokens is growing, and memecoins like Dogecoin and Shiba Inu continue to attract attention.
“Bitcoin appears to be pushing out of a bullish flag pattern, and Ether is likely to confirm a long-term breakout on a close above resistance this Friday,” said Katie Stockton, founder and managing partner of Fairlead Strategies, in a note.
As of 9:54 a.m. in New York, the overall market cap of cryptocurrencies hit $3.3 trillion, according to CoinGecko pricing. The third- and fourth-biggest tokens, Binance Coin and Solana, have added more than 20% in the past seven days; all of the seven biggest coins are up over the last week.
Bitcoin rose as much as 5.6% on Monday to $66,414, nearing its previous record of about $67,000. Ether advanced as much as 3% to a new high of $4,768.
Crypto companies such as miners Marathon Digital Holdings Inc. and Riot Blockchain Inc. each rallied more than 10% Monday. Coinbase Global Inc., the largest U.S. exchange, gained as much as 3.6%, a day before reporting third-quarter results.
Of course, crypto is notoriously volatile. The last time Bitcoin reached these levels, it fell back several thousand dollars, and it’s undergone multiple corrections that take it down by half or more. Other coins are even more volatile — the memecoins bounce back and forth wildly at times — and scams and hacks occur with some frequency.
Bitcoin’s current rally has been fueled by the U.S. trading debut of a Bitcoin-linked ETF as well as Elon Musk’s weekend Twitter poll, said Ben Caselin, head of research and strategy at crypto exchange AAX. “With Shiba and other memecoins having surged recently, and Facebook’s rebranding to Meta, interest in altcoins continues to rise.”
Crypto optimists had predicted $100,000 all-time high for bitcoin by December. The prediction is appearing increasingly possible as metaverse, web 3.0, NFT and EFT keep sustaining the market’s rally.
Big one: “With Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) suspending Foreign Exchange (FX) supply to Bureau De Changes (BDCs), a total of six banks in nine months of 2021 generated N145.6billion income from trading in FX. The six banks in prior nine months of 2020 had generated a total of N47.16billion from trading in the FX market.”
Many US-focused ecommerce startups in Nigeria are struggling and closing. Yes, it is a nice vision: make it possible for Nigerians to buy shoes, bags, shirts, etc from Macy’s, JCPenney, etc as everyone wants quality things. However, when currency runs wild, bad things happen. It takes us to one of my core teachings: Product Minimum Viable Quality (PMVQ).
The deal is this: the construct of quality has no meaning until the price of the product is put into considerations. I always ask entrepreneurs to consider the Minimum Viable Quality (MVQ) bounded by the product target price which the market will respond to. You can build rockets to fly people around the world; that is an engineering possibility. But does that make business sense if no one can afford it? Ask the makers of Concorde Airlines for answers.
As apps mushroomed across Africa to help Africans dress like British and Americans, investors came along. But as currencies struggle, those apps are fading. Why? You may like Mercedes Benz over Toyota but can you pay for it? Etisalat had the best broadband service in Nigeria, but it priced many out – and ended up struggling. A crappy affordable service might have helped it because it is very hard to make money in places with limited money. Until you understand the relationship between price and quality, you will not make progress in the African business scene.
Sure, this does not mean making fake products. But it does mean finding a path to a market with things your target market can afford. It is the same company that makes those electric bulbs they use in airport towers and the ones we use at home. Those airport ones can go for $10k per unit while the home one is about $1.
The airport versions can last for a decade because the real cost is the replacement cost while the crappy ones we use at home can go for 2 months and bust. A company which pursues quality, thinking that families will spend $10k to have an electric bulb that will last for 10 years has no mission! So what happens? You build for a minimum viable quality of $1 because that is what the market can pay!
Stretch it, you are outside the sweet spot of spending in Africa (see the plot).
Comment: This reminds me of an observation made by one of my lecturers back then in the university. The Chinese by then had started flooding African markets with all sorts of cheap lookalike products to the ones we grew of consuming from Nigeria. Of course the Nigerian products were of better quality but before long, everyone started crying fowl of how quickly the cheaper Chinese products were getting bad. When i asked my lecturer back then why people kept buying the Chinese products only to complain afterwards, he smiled. I probed further…even America is complaining about Chinese products…why do they allow them do this…his response keeps resonating inybears till date. The problem in America is different from the one here in Cameroon. Over there, Americans are complaining of high quality products from China that sells cheaper than American products of the same quality. Here we have products with quality equivalent to what we can pay.
My Response: I have a video on this where I used the Chinese toy industry and how that playbook made it possible for them to win markets across developing regions of the world. Who wants to spend $50 to buy a Christmas race-car toy from Germany when China offers one for $1 even though it may not last more than 2 hours on Christmas day. Because mothers are smarter: China’s $1 will win as they can save money for more important things. The kid has his toy even though it did not work for many hours!
