Telephony in Nigeria has had a chequered history and up till this moment, telephone business around here remains a conundrum that has grown impertinently into full-blown, legitimised subterfuge. Forgive Hardball’s uncharacteristically winding introduction, but telecoms companies (that is euphemism for GSM firms) in Nigeria have mastered a new and unwritten business model that thrives on trickery and ambush.
Let us start from the fact that Nigeria is probably the only country in the world that has completely phased out landlines, thus the entire population numbering about 170 million people depend on the expensive GSM (Global System of Mobile Communications) for voice, messages and all forms of exchange. So what we have is one huge oligopolistic cartel that offers extremely expensive services. And we live with it and boast about our success story in a liberalised telecommunications age.
But what is our reality? Have you seen the ribald spectacle of a Nigerian desperately trying to make a call? The kind who holds his cell phone to his lips as if it were a chocolate bar? He takes turns to yell into the phone before he places it to his ears to try to listen. In between talking into the phone and pasting it to his ears, the call drops. Unknown to him, he returns the phone to his mouth yelling at the top of his voice; breaking out in sweat.
It has become impossible to make nary a one-minute call without losing connection; and if one manages to succeed with it, half of the period the connection is poor, perhaps deliberately so (Hardball would want to wager) so most times, subscribers would stay two minutes on the line for what would have been a 30 seconds’ conversation.
But these are yet benign tactics. Some of the networks choose the company they keep and do business with. One or two networks never seem to interconnect and when perchance the subscriber manages to bridge the gap between them he pays premium. For such antagonistic networks, the story, when you dial, is that “the subscriber is not available”. But how could that be? Even when the subscriber you call is the phone on your left hand…
And to get the goat in you; as if they are watching you, when you set about doing the things you love most, a call comes in… you pick it… it is a recorded message from your beguiling network… and you could lose your mind if you don’t check yourself.
Today, all the networks are making us do all over again, a biometric register we had done about twice before. And they set up a tortuous process that could mess up all of two or three days of your life. And nobody seems to care.
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