• Tweet

This is what my beloved Starcomms calls 'Broadband'. God Forbid

I’ve been saying this forever. If you’re currently in Nigeria and you go to Speedtest and do the basic internet speed test, you’ll see that you’ve been lied to by Starcomms, MTN, Glo, Airtel and most annoyingly Swift and Mobitel ’4G’. Linkserve Chairman, Chima Onyekwere finally admitted in an interview with BusinessDay that no Nigerian Internet Service Provider offers BroadBand to its customers. Despite all their ‘Broadband’, ’4G’ and ‘Faster’ ads, Nigerians still get the worst internet service in the world. Worst still, we pay the highest for it. We posted an infographic of Internet speeds around the world and how much they cost a while back.

Chima Onyekwere said:

“When we defined broadband four years ago, we said that broadband was anything from 128kbs.Today, we can not define broadband in that manner. Broadband is actually 4 megabits per second. Therefore, I can confidently say that no telcom or ISP is delivering 4 MEG to any consumer in the market.”

Shine your eyes! This is why your ’3G’ service from MTN, Glo and Airtel doesn’t work well. They don’t actually offer these services they boast about on TV. A simple Twitter search from MTN proves that their users aren’t happy. Please, don’t annoy me with the ‘free 4MB’ they’re beginning to roll out now. What the hell is that meant to be used for?

He also said:
“But really, whether you look at Wikipedia, or the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), or even International Telecommunications Union (ITU) definitions of broadband, they have increased the threshold of what can be regarded as broadband.

Thus, I can now define 256kbps which is commonly available today as a percentage of broadband. Basic broadband is actually 4 megabits per second. Even though the internet application on some dongle you can actually get 2MEG, the Internet delivered to the consumer is usually between 64kbps to 128kbps,”.

A few weeks ago, Telecom operators said they need about 60,000 cell towers to roll out proper services compared to the current 20,000 they have. This confused me. Nobody’s stopping them from buying and setting up more cell towers. They make billions of profits from us each year and all we get from them are stupid, endless promos (Someone please BAN THEM).

On the regulator side, I haven’t seen anything the new NCC management has done to ensure these companies don’t lie to the non-tech savvy consumer. The NCC needs to especially sanction Mobitel and Swift for flaunting ’4G’ services when the NCC itself doesn’t issue 4G licenses. I mean, Swift runs on Main One’s cable and Main One isn’t even claiming ’4G’ speeds. How far na?

Hey! You out there! When next you’re subscribing to an ISP, ask to test the speeds on Speedtest.net and show the people at the Starcomms and Swift stands at Palms that you’re not stupid. While drafting this post, my Starcomms modem disconnected itself, it’s going to do this over 20 times in the next 12 hours

What do you think about the Linkserve Chairman’s statement? Should other ISPs emulate him? Do we need to plan a boycott of these services? Leave us a comment.

Source: BusinessDay

Binjo

Binjo is passionate about(some say he's obsessed with) technology and the web. . In his spare time, Binjo runs UP NEPA! Where he blogs on a wide range of issues. Circle Him on Google+

More Posts - Website - Twitter - Facebook - Pinterest