NTEL bets on WakaGo to simplify global connectivity for Nigerian travellers

By Juliet Umeh For Nigerians travelling abroad, staying connected without paying high roaming charges can be challenging. NATCOM Development and Investment Limited, trading as NTEL, is betting on WakaGo, its global eSIM service, to provide a more convenient and affordable alternative. In this interview with Vanguard, NTEL’s Chief Technology Officer, Kingsley Uwazie, explained how WakaGo enables travellers to access mobile data across supported countries without changing their primary SIM cards.

Excerpts. What are your immediate priorities as NTEL’s Chief Technology Officer? At NTEL, our aim is to launch a national sovereign network. Prior, NTEL was NITEL. Before NTEL got privatised, before there was a privatisation, that privatisation has gone through various cycles, like what I would call a teething baby, and has led us here to where we are now.

And our aim is to get our SIM cards, get Nigerians connected again, both locally and globally. And it’s a long road back. In trying to achieve that, we have deployed a few products on our road back. Of course, the target is to have the mobile network up and running so that Nigerians can stay connected with us. But at the moment, we have released two products, one being an AirFibre B2B product, and number two being WakaGo, a global eSIM product for Nigerians outside Nigeria.

How do you plan to assess NITEL’s existing network and infrastructure before deciding where investment and upgrades are most urgently needed? At NTEL, we are pursuing a new growth strategy called BET, which stands for Beam, Eden and Titan. The strategy is built on using our existing assets to generate revenue internally and reinvest it in rebuilding the network, rather than depending entirely on external funding.

Titan focuses on our telecommunications infrastructure, including towers, fibre-optic cables, ducts and rights of way. We are restoring our towers to operation and making them available to other telecom operators through infrastructure sharing. We are also leasing some of our fibre and connectivity assets to generate revenue. Eden focuses on our real estate.

We are entering into strategic partnerships and joint ventures to develop our properties for productive uses, including projects that can benefit communities and serve as technology hubs. Beam is our digital business, which combines connectivity with digital services. Beyond voice and data, we are exploring financial services, banking-related solutions and other digital offerings.

WakaGo, our global eSIM service, and AirFibre, our wireless broadband service, fall under this division. In summary, BET is our strategy for maximising the value of NTEL’s existing assets, creating new revenue streams and using the proceeds to rebuild our network and expand our services. NTEL is developing AirFibre. What technology will underpin the service, which areas will it target first, and how will its performance compare with fibre and mobile broadband?

So, you first of all have to look at what’s the problem we’re trying to solve, let’s start with that. And the problem we’re trying to solve is reliable connectivity. In Nigeria today, you have a lot of fibre cuts and I think a lot of people before me have spoken about the amount of fibre cuts we experience in Nigeria. What we experience in Nigeria in a month is more than what some countries experience in a year.

And we have also seen that one of the biggest challenges we have is last mile connection in Nigeria. There is sufficient fibre to the tower, but then last mile, fibre to the home, fibre to the office, you have problems there. Now, we believe with wireless broadband, with sufficient wireless broadband that can provide fibre-like speeds, we can bridge that gap and that’s where Airfiber comes in.

So, Airfiber is a B2B product for us first of all. We have created what I like to call an open-access wireless metro network. And why did I say it’s an open-access wireless metro network? It’s a next-generation fixed wireless access technology that can do speeds of up to 1.2 gigabits per second. And it’s open-access because we have developed it and we enable the ISPs to ride on our networks to provide last mile connectivity.

We understand that the terrain in Nigeria is very difficult terrain. And because it’s difficult, the ISPs struggle with high capital expenditure to deploy fibre and high operating expenditure because of the cost of diesel, the fibre cuts. Now, if we can take that cost, build on our towers and our existing infrastructure, we will provide a network for ISPs to ride on.

And then the ISPs will use our metro network to reach the last mile. So, that’s where the Airfiber comes in. Of course, Airfiber will also be targeted at a few enterprises, but our primary customer is the ISP today. Now, you ask the question, how is that different from fibre? Fibre is wired, Airfiber here is wireless, so it’s operating on spectrum.

And we have successful cases of deploying Airfiber over a 9-kilometre di