| Interconnectivity is like forced
marriage – Udo Oreye, Peace Global Satellite Communications
CEO
By CHIDI NNADI
Thursday, April
14,
2005
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Barrister Udo Oreye
Photo: Sun News Publishing |
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In the hospitality industry, Barrister Udo Oreye, chairman
and chief executive officer of Peace Global Satellite Communications
Limited, has carved a niche for himself. He was the first
in the area of his operation – Ikeja, Lagos –
to incorporate Internet into the hospitality business as well
as bringing in the police to patrol his premises. And with
his foray into telecommunications industry, Oreye is poised
again to make a difference. Already, his PeaceTalk Double
Phone is a product in a class of its own.
In this exclusive interview with Daily Sun, the Peace Global
Satellite Communications boss gives an insight into how he
started business, happenings in the telecommunications industry
and his wave-making wired PeaceTalk Double Phone.
Introduction
I am Barrister Udo Livingstone Oreye. I am a lawyer by profession.
From law, I diversified into the hospitality industry. And
from the hospitality industry, we moved to diversify further
into telecommunications.
Diversification
We diversified because of the desire to serve. It was the
same desire that led us to go into the hospitality industry.
Our own concept of hospitality is unique in that when we looked
at the environment, we said, yes, we already have hotels here,
why can’t we do a kind of hoteling that is different
from the existing ones.
So, we are the first hotelier to integrate Internet into hospitality.
The Internet is a phenomenon whose time has come. It has made
the whole world a small village. Our target clientele in the
hospitality industry are strangers, visitors, and businessmen,
who happened to be in Lagos and at the same time want an environment
that is secured and homely to sleep in.
Again, we know that the busienssman would want to communicate
with his business partners all over the world and that even
an ordinary tourist would want to reach his people at home
from time to time. So, the Internet becomes indispensable.
That was why we incorprated Internet into hospitality as far
back as year 2000. Ask any hotel, particularly in Ikeja area
to tell you when they started having Internet access in their
hotels; certainly, it is not going to be before 2000. We knew
when the others started and where they copied the idea from.
Besides, we also realised that there can be no peace without
security. So, we broke the phobia hoteliers have for policemen.
The police are our friends. They have a constitutional role
to play, which is to protect life and property. We need the
police if actually we want peace. So, we approached the police
and said please come and be patrolling our hotels for security
purposes. And in the past five years they have been consistent
in the patrol of our hotels, both the main hotel and the annex.
Consequently, other hotels in Omole Estate seeing policemen
coming in and going out every day from our hotels started
to find out what was the problem. And when they got to know,
that it was for protection and seeing how our customers were
appreciative of it, they too took to the idea. They liaised
with the police, saying, please as you are going to Peace
Hotel, branch to my hotel and equally sign my register and
then go.
Communication business
Peace Global Satellite Communications Limited is essentially
a telecommunications outfit. We have four licenses from the
Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC). The NCC, issues
licences per service. When we wanted to operate an Internet
service, they asked us to apply for Internet service licence.
Subsequently, we applied for VSAT licence. Later, we applied
for Pre-paid Calling Card licence and then the Private Telephone
Operator (PTO) licence. So, we have four licences from the
Nigerian Communciations Commission.
The one in focus now is the PeaceTalk Double Phone. Ordinarily,
it is a telephone network that is fully interconnected with
other telephone networks. Any subscriber on any telephone
network can call our subscribers, so also our subscribers
can call any subscriber on any other network throughout the
world.
But in addition to PeaceTalk Double Phone being a phone, it
doubles as street intercom. So, in a street where we have
about 25 subscribers, we instal a telephone at the security
post, at the entrance of the street. We do the billing in
a configuration that among the residents, they can be talking
to one another as long as they wanted with just N35 per day,
that is, N1,000 in a month. It is not pay as you go, or pay
per second or per minute, no. You may talk for 24 hours in
a day and still pay N35.
This in effect has the advantage of promoting good neighbourliness.
For instance, somebody at one end of the street late in the
night can discuss with the other person at the other end at
the flat rate. And they will pour out their minds because
they knew the money is already paid for. Then in case somebody
is ill, he can quickly call a neighbour, he doesn’t
need to come out from his house. Then the most important part
of it is the security aspect. When a visitor is coming into
a street, the security man at the gate will ask him to identify
his intended host. If the visitor is unable to name correctly
the intended host the visitor will not be allowed into the
street. That has the advantage of preventing would-be criminals
or miscreants from gaining entry into the street with a view
to carrying out surveillance, preparatory to raiding the place.
This is because such a miscreant may not have a resident’s
name to mention and if he mentions anyone, the security man
has direct access to all the residents’ phone and can
phone them at no cost to ask them to identify the man at the
gate. If the man could not be identified, he has to go back
and if he wants to force his way in, the security man has
access to four police stations in the neighbourhood and his
calling them is toll-free.
Going into telecom
We came into the telecom industry really to remove the problem
telecommunication had in our environment. The problem of long
spannage of drop-wire. You will see people using 10 coils
to take telephone to their houses or offices, when there is
a cut on the 10-coil cable, it is usually difficult to trace
at what point that cut occurred. There are even some cuts
that may occur in a cable that may not be complete and to
detect this under 10 coils spannage is usually difficult.
So, what people now do is to abandon that very cable to buy
another one. But before you know it, the whole place is defaced
and service becoming poor as a result of the cuts. It could
even be as you are on the phone and a lorry cuts the line
or somebody carrying something high cutting it or even the
area boys cutting it. So, we said no, this is not the industry
standard. The industry standard is that from the distribution
point to the subscriber’s house or office should not
be more than 300 metres.
We actually had no money to do this on our own. So, we sourced
money because we believed that it is better to get facilities
to do something that is of standard, which will enable the
subscribers to be talking always, than the subscriber wants
to make a call and there is no tone, the phone is dead and
reason being there was a cut on the line. And when this is
reported to the telephone operator, because he has so many
lines that are down that way, his workers cannot cover everything
on the same day. So, they take two, three days to clear the
faults. And in the two, three days, the PTO is losing money
and the subscriber is not happy.
The network
Ours is a wired phone. At Saka Tinubu, NITEL, in Victoria
Island, we are interconnected with other PTOs. That’s
why I could phone any GSM line a while ago and it went through
straight. From that point of interconnectivity at Saka Tinubu,
the signal is taken by way of multi-placer and fibre to another
point of interconnectivity also close to Saka Tinubu, from
where we used a micro-wave radio, a radio indoor unit with
the antenna up, which will be communicating to our antenna
here. And we equally have a radio indoor unit in the exchange.
And from the exchange, the radio will now interface with the
switch while the cables move from the switch to the NDF. From
the NDF, it will go underground to the various cabinets. From
the cabinets, we use aerial cables, big ones, to move it to
where we want it to go to. As the cables of about 100 or 200
pairs are going on air, we will be dropping capacities on
the way to serve the subscribers along that way. Such drops
are called Distribution Points (DP) and from there, you can
start using the branding wire.
Challenges
The challenges in the telecommunication industry are quite
enormous. One of the challenges, apart from constructing the
network, after obtaining the necessary permits from the relevant
agencies, is to construct a dot. You’ve got to dig.
As you are digging, you come across some heady people, some
motivated by jealousy, some just because they want you to
recognise them, they tell you, you cannot dig across their
premises, which actually is not true. That is supposed to
be the right of way. And right of way is a setback that a
developer must observe before his building plan would be approved.
Some of them, for us to plant an ordinary pole, we have to
drag ourselves to the Commissioner of Police’s office;
just to plant an ordinary pole on the right of way of an estate
that was mapped out by the government. So, that is one of
the challenges.
Another one is interconnectivity itself. On this issue, we
remain indebted to the Nigerian Communciations Commision.
But for NCC, some networks were reluctant in interconnecting
with us, for reasons best known to them. Some said, we should
go commercial first, full blast, so that they will not give
us E1 that will be idle. But we told them that if every network
should give us this condition, which is not one of the conditions
stated by the NCC, where are we going to start from? Who will
buy our telephone that we will now make it comemercial since
it is not interconnected with any network.
We made the NCC to realise that when we were sourcing loan
for the project, no bank official raised the issue of interconnectivity.
I remember vividly telling the bank officials that the issue
of interconnectivity was like the marriage they used to have
in Ebele, a village in Edo State, where I hail from. There,
a girl’s parents would be approached for their hands
in the marriage of their daughter. And after the discussions
and all that, but unknown to the girl, as she is on her way
to the market, some people will just pick her up, kidnap her,
and take her to the husband’s house. She will shout
and shout, saying she doesn’t like the man. But eventually,
older women will come out to say that the same way you were
picked up on the way to the market was how we were picked
up too and we now have kids. And that marriage by force worked.
That is the issue of interconnectivity, whether other PTOs
like it or not, they must interconnect with us, according
to the Nigerian Communications Act. Some PTOs interconnected
easily. We wrote to them and without any hesitation they interconnected,
but where we had difficulties, we told the NCC and it moved
in swiftly and this was resolved quickly too. We got our licence
in November, 2003 and before the expiration of the year, we
are already interconnected with all the PTOs.
Funding
For the funding, we remain grateful and indebted to Wema Bank
Plc. Not just because they brought out the fund, but also
for the fact that the initial request we made could not complete
the project and we went back to them and explained, that we
needed additional facility. And they did not abandon us to
say, this was not what we agreed at the beginning. They brought
out more money to give to us. Again, in the course of the
implementation, we realised that we needed more and they didn’t
say that the second time you applied, we asked you whether
you will need more money and you said no, why are you coming
back the third time? Wema Bank still went ahead to give us
the money that now enabled us to roll out. So, we remain grateful
to them.
Dream
By five years’ time, we have a vision of bringing the
cost of telecommunication to the barest minimum. At the same
time, we are planning for a network that is ever going to
be functional. Let it be raining seriously, no matter the
weather, people should be able to phone and browse on the
Internet. And we also have this vision of having a network
that will be all over the place. Every nation, every institution,
every individual has a beginning. What you were 20 years ago
is not what you are today. Our vision is to be a world class
provider of a network that is capable of meeting the needs
of the subscribers, no matter the change in weather.
Like the concept of security and communal life we have, we
intend to move into other areas with it. What we are doing
here is the beginning, a very humble one. But the most important
thing is the vision. We are just using this as a model for
people to see that this think can work. So, from here we intend
to move to other places within and outside Nigeria by the
grace of God.
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