LAGOS – The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has been advised to carry out a thorough study to find out why some Information and Communications Technology (ICT) companies were dying.
Mr Titi Omo-Ettu, a former President of the Association of Telecommunications Companies of Nigeria (ATCON) gave the advice on Tuesday, at an interactive session with newsmen in Lagos.
Omo-Ettu said that embarking on such a study would indicate whether the dying companies needed some forms of bail out from the NCC.
He said that the study should be carried out in the interest of the ICT sector, so that it could continue to contribute meaningfully to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the country.
According to him, some ICT companies may be closing down due to managerial faults, while some may be as a result of the business environment.
The President of ATCON, Mr Lanre Ajayi, also said the reduction of ICT companies had always worried the association.
Ajayi said that ATCON was doing all it could to ensure that government policies were favourable to its members.
“We are yet to approach government on the dying ICT companies; we will discuss it in the National Executive Council(NEC) meeting, to know how to go about it,” he said.
The ATCON chief said the NEC members would find out a genuine reason why such companies should be bailed out.
The First Vice-President of ATCON, Mr Olusola Teniola, said that multiple taxation and Right of Way (RoW) fees were among the challenges facing the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in the industry.
Teniola said those challenges had made many ISPs to go into extinction, hence, the need for NCC to further look into them.
“If you do not have a deep pocket, you will find it difficult to operate in the Nigerian ICT industry,” he said. (NAN