Airtel, Erickson may part ways

Sierra Leone’s oldest mobile phone operator, now known as Airtel, has confirmed to Politico that it has issued a 90-day ultimatum to one of its contractors, the international telecoms service provider, Erickson. Erickson is to improve on Airtel’s services in Sierra Leone, Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of the Congo or face a penalty or possible termination of contract. This has been confirmed by Airtel Sierra Leone’s legal and regulatory manager, Gerald Cole. That deadline expires at the end of June. The same month, 4 June, in which expires a 21-day ultimatum slammed by the Sierra Leone telecoms regulator, NATCOM, for Airtel to improve its services or risk facing suspension. NATCOM boss, Siray Timbo, told Politico that suspension would not be automatic should Airtel fail to meet the target. He said there would have to be a process following the end of the deadline leading to any suspension. He, however, emphasized that the NATCOM Act gave them powers to suspend after a second serious breach. At present Airtel are paying to NATCOM a US$ 450,000 court fine which followed an earlier breach. Sources say more than US$ 300,000 of that has already been paid. The Airtel ultimatum to Erickson was leaked to Politico just days after the local mobile phone operator heaped praises on them during a breakfast meeting with journalists on Friday at the Country Lodge in Freetown. The Airtel SL Managing Director, RVS Bhullar even said, “We are working with Erickson, a world leader” in the telecommunications business, and did not hint in any way to show there was an issue with their contractor and assured that they were committed to “providing international standards services”. The phone operator also hinted that they had issues with the regulator. Legal and regulatory manager Gerald Cole, who apologized to Airtel customers because of recent glitches to their service, said NATCOM had not carried out a proper customer survey and had a “subjective means of assessing the network”. He called for a joint venture to do any such assessment using established standards agreed to the world over. The technical and other senior officials of Airtel also told journalists that they needed additional spectrum on the 900 band. At present they operate on 5 megawatts on that band and around 12 megawatts on the 1800 band which they say does not suffice. NATCOM boss Timbo told Politico that it was an International Telecommunications Union regulation that only 25 megawatts could be assigned to a country on the 900 band. He said 5 megawatts each was assigned to Celtel (now Airtel), Millicom (later Tigo), Comium, Africell and Datatel. He said that when Africell bought over Tigo half of their spectrum was given to them bringing them to 7.5 megawatts, and the remaining 2.5 megawatts given to Greennet. On the Datatel spectrum, Timbo said the issue of the company was still in court hence their spectrum could not yet be redistributed if at all. The NATCOM boss said that in Nigeria, which is much larger than Sierra Leone is both in space and population, MTN and Airtel for example were making do with the same 5 megawatts each especially so when they had added a 3G spectrum to Airtel. He wondered why the same could not apply in the case of Airtel in Sierra Leone. To this the Airtel legal and regulatory manager replied that the terrain in Sierra Leone was different and more difficult owing to its mountainous nature, “not as flat as Nigeria is”. Airtel management officials also complained of the issues electricity saying 70% of their masts were being run on private generators. They also cited stealing of their materials on site and the difficult terrain they had to cope with in sending supplies to some remote parts of the country where transport could not get to. Speaker after speaker at the presser spoke about the overhead costs being incurred in their operations including the rise in the price of fuel. They say that between June 2011 and September 2012 fuel price had hiked by two-thirds and that they had spent US$ 18 million on network alone since June last year. The above notwithstanding, they say they are “passionate about rural coverage” adding that there has been a 200% increase in the number of customers in the last 30 months.