The Internet Service Providers Association of Nigeria (ISPAN) has advised the latest entrant into the telecoms space in Nigeria, NTel, which rides on the backbone of the moribund national telecoms company NITEL, not to rely entirely on 4G LTE for survival.

The immediate past president of the association, Engr. Samuel Adeleke, warned the company not to embrace and attempt to repeat the already existing models in the market in its bid to attract users of its services.

According to Adeleke the company should strive to offer more to attract users, including unlimited bandwidth at affordable rates.

"They have basket of licenses, huge capacity of fibre links across the country, if they can provide unlimited bandwidth at affordable price they will attract huge customers. 4G LTE is a good start, but they cannot survive on data alone," he said.

Adeleke urged NTel to also deploy voice services and find a way to introduce 4G LTE SIM cards since 4G LTE compatible devices are considered expensive for the Nigerian market.

"They should provide voice service and (to) get smartphones that are compatible with 4G LTE is expensive ... if they can come up with 4G LTE SIM and give to people with the device, will be good," he continued.

In a related development, there is speculation in the market that NTel may soon launch voice services and will be doing it on the 0804 numbering plan. This is because NTel owner NATCOM Consortium has decided to use the already secured numbering plan instead of applying for a new plan which would incur additional expense.

0804 has the capacity for 10 million lines. It provides a uniform dialing procedure for local calls, national long distance calls and international calls.

NATCOM secured the numbering plan as part of the licenses it acquired from NITEL's mobile arm, the Mobile Telecommunications (M-Tel) company of Nigeria.

NATCOM also secured cellular spectrum/microwave frequencies; telecom operating licences, international submarine cable, which is the SAT-3 and cell towers. The company also acquired fibre and duct network (including Right Of Way), prime buildings and satellite earth stations.