The Executive Vice Chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission, Prof Umar Danbatta  has raised alarm over what he described as unwarranted cutting of fiber cables and unending community attack on telecommunications infrastructures, saying these are some of the factors responsible for poor quality of services in the country.

Danbatta, who was a guest on the popular Channels TV programmes ‘Sunrise Daily’ this morning said, though the hitherto drop call rates being experienced by telecom consumers is not acceptable, findings by the Commission shows that fiber cut and community issues are largely responsible for the poor quality of networks.

“Based on the measurement of quality of service we have conducted, the call drop rate is not acceptable; the call success rate is equally not encouraging. But our findings also show that there are technical and non technical factors responsible for the poor quality of networks. These factors include fiber cut, community issues and unsteady electricity supply,” the former University lecturer said while answering questions centered around quality of telecoms services on the TV programme.

Danbatta argued that electricity supply is closely tied to the quality of service as all the network operators depend on electricity supply on a daily basis. “Even though they do depend also on generating power on their own, they still have challenges of diesel most of the times,” he asserted.

He said in order to address some of these issues, the Commission has suggested to the network operators to look for alternative means of powering their base stations. Some of such alternative means include resorting to solar energy, which also requires additional investment, but that will ultimately be a solution to lack of electricity supply.

CWG Plc, a technology solution provider that enables the growth of businesses, said it is promoting the ATM as a Service initiated because of its inherent capability to help banks and other financial institutions focus on their core business of rendering financial services to their customers.

“The rationale behind ATM as a Service is the operational efficiency, whereby companies can focus on their core business and allow contractors take care of other areas of their business that are not very critical to them,” said Henry Erigha, CWG’s Senior Manager, Financial/SME.

Erigha,who stated this in a statement said having realized the many headaches around operating an ATM machine in Nigeria, CWG decided to be handling the operation of the ATM as a service and take the headaches off the banks so they can have time to operate more efficiently within their organization.

He believes that ATM as a Service model is the new wave around solution providers, stressing that with the model, banks do not need to roll out huge CAPEX to procure an ATM, which he disclosed requires a minimum of N7 million to make one machine function.

“To acquire one ATM machine based on current foreign exchange requires minimum of N7million in Nigeria today, and a bank is expected to deploy 300 ATM machines across Nigeria. This is huge for the banks. So we desire to take this headache from the banks; we have access to the fund and we are the custodian of the ATM,” Erigha asserted.

He stated that all that is required from the banks is for them to pay a subscription, which could be monthly or quarterly for them to make use of the ATM as a Service, which he assures is a more secure way of doing business because it helps operational efficiency and realigns business roadmap in such a way that the banks are now more focused on the direction and organizational goals as agreed with their board.