NCC, NITDA, others harp on regulatory, technology neutrality to leverage convergence

Regulators, operators and cross-sectors stakeholders have a role to ensure that regulatory frameworks and legislations continuously support innovation and competition, even as convergence takes foothold in West Africa, experts submitted at the 8th West Africa Convergence Conference (WACC), which took place recently in Lagos.

WACC is an annual stakeholders’ forum on convergence trends in West Africa, organised by Knowhow Media & Market Intelligence International Limited.

While technology convergence has inherently meant the fusing of otherwise separate technology platforms for regulators and policy makers, the challenge has remained how to sustain growth, maintain market coherency, remain fair to all parties and be effective in the face of increasing trends of disruptive technologies.

“Every operator is concern with leveraging on technologies to enhance service, gain competitive advantage and operate within the fringe of existing regulatory frameworks. The pressure to meet market and technology dynamics often result in conflict with slower regulatory process,” said President of the Association of Telecom Companies of Nigeria (ATCON), Mr Olusola Teniola.

Convergence poses a unique challenge to all regulators and increasingly, they must adopt positions that best serve all interests, said Executive Vice Chairman of Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Professor Umar Garba Danbatta, in a paper sent in for WACC 2016 on, “Regulation, Technology Neutrality and New Telecom Services in the era of Convergence.”

Danbatta said the NCC had opted for technology neutrality convinced that technology cannot be regulated but operators could be regulated to comply with the policy goals of the country as it concerns the telecom sector.

“We are all witnessing different technological changes and also observing convergence of services and their resulting effects on regulations especially technology dependent regulations which are made obsolete by these changes. We have learnt from these experiences that, in developing regulations, we need to consider technology neutrality.

“We equally understand that, technology dependent regulations could hamper, slow down or restrict innovations, development and deployment of new services.

“As regulator, we have observed emerging trends and evolution of new technologies and services from time to time. Technological changes such as Over The Top (OTT) services whose mode of operations are technically different from the traditional services have emerged.

“OTT services are competing with traditional services, for example, voice calls are routed differently from the existing system which used structured numbering plan developed for routing and billing purposes, for technically different platform which establishes call using applications (apps) sitting on phones connected through the Internet to their hosting servers.”

For the Director General, National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Dr Isa Ali Ibrahim Pantami, who spoke on ‘Convergence, IT Regulation and the Promotion of Local Content’, regulation remains essential to sustaining real growth and the building of indigenous capacity, and with convergence, it becomes even more imperative to ensure that the country leverages on converged platforms not just as a consumer but as a producer.