Etisalat: Telcos must meet financial standards, says NCC

 Telecommunications companies must henceforth meet certain financial and technical standards before they can operate in the country, the Board of the Nigerian Communications Commission said on Thursday.

The board stated this while giving directives to the NCC management regarding the outstanding $589m from the $1.2bn loan obtained from a consortium of 13 banks by Etisalat Nigeria in 2013.

agency collaboration exhibited by the Central Bank of Nigeria as a fellow regulator.

“The board directed the management to ensure at all times that telecoms companies meet the financial and technical integrity standards expected of them.

“The board has had a three-fold concern: Ensuring continuous service to the over 21 million Etisalat subscribers; safeguarding the employees; and stabilising the telecoms sector to ensure its contribution to the Gross Domestic Product is not impacted and investment interest continues.”

However, Etisalat said it was using the launch of its collocation services to strengthen its operations and generate revenue, adding that it would also help organisations reduce their investment in Information Technology infrastructure in order to concentrate on their core business.

The Director, Enterprise Segment, Etisalat Nigeria, Eric Uwaoma, said, “We are glad to announce that Etisalat Nigeria has commenced the provision of colocation services to enterprises. This is in line with our vision to give more value to our enterprise customers.”

According to him, Etisalat is determined to be a business enabler within the corporate market by providing them with services and solutions that help organisations operate more efficiently.

“In addition to colocation service, Etisalat will also be introducing hosting service, infrastructure as a service and much more,” he said.

Uwaoma explained that the Etisalat colocation service offered a data centre facility in which a business could rent space for servers and other computing hardware.

“It offers to house and provide power for servers and IT infrastructure for corporates and medium-sized enterprises with 99.7 per cent availability,” he added.