The Managing Director, Smile
Communications, Mr. Michiel Buitelaar, has said that for the digital
economy to grow in the country, the government needs to give priority to
the Internet of Things.
He said the IoT was the only practicable
determinant to growing a viable digital economy in Nigeria, saying, it
would make the people to become more productive.
“Fundamentally, the economy is very positive and will benefit a lot by becoming digital in the way it does business,” he said.
The Smile MD said that the concept of IoT
was already happening in Nigeria, but stated that businesses and
individuals should be more open to it.
“We have a very innovative climate here.
One will be amazed with the number of people, vehicles and machines
hooking up and finding new ways of doing business,” Buitelaar added.
ADVERTISEMENT
Meanwhile,
he said Smile Communications, with the deployment of 4G/LTE technology
that runs on 800GHz spectrum, offered the “best connectivity and high
network availability index in the country.”
Buitelaar quoted the Nigerian
Communications Commission Monthly Internet Subscribers Data, which
indicated that users on the country’s telecom networks increased to
83,362,814 as of February 2015.
He, therefore, said that Smile understood
the type of broadband services Nigerians had been waiting for, “even at
a reduced price and has consistently provided them with excellent
services.”
He said that it was a common thing among
some operators that as more customers subscribed to their network, the
quality depreciated, saying, “but at Smile and after our successful
start, we are working to ensure there is no such backlash to customers
coming to the network.”
He said, “We are prepared and working through densification of the network. Where we see issues, we quickly address them.
“More so, we are deploying more capacity
and the figure shows we are actually meeting our brand promise which is
for everybody to get six megabytes per second on download, even as the
busy hours of the day.
“Our team has always been on its oars to
meet the target and we don’t get congestion. In other words, we are
ready to offer corporate organisations the kind of connectivity that
will enhance their productivity.”
However, Smile Communications Chief
Marketing Officer, Mrs. Alero Ladipo, said that after two years in
operations, the network session with the CEOs, CTOs and CIOs of major
firms operating in Nigeria was to alert the participants about “our
service offering and how we can help reduce their costs.”
Speaking through the Head of Corporate
and Enterprises Sales, Mr. Chiekezi Dozie, Ladipo said, “We use 800GHz
spectrum, which itself offers efficiency for mobile communications.
“It is a pure Internet provider network. So, we can do corporate voice, data, and can make life very simple for them.”
She said, “The era we are in, people are
increasingly engaging in mobile communications; therefore, we have
MiFis, mobile and fixed solutions to cover the whole gamut of corporate
requirements. The testimonials are out there.
“Apart from the fact that our network is
very fast even at reduced cost, we have had a couple of tests with some
Automated Teller Machines.
“We compared the network on the ATMs with
machines in other networks. A normal ATM with a different connectivity
provider records about 43 seconds speed on transaction. But with our
network, such transaction was done in 23 seconds. That is an improvement
on customer experience.”
http://www.punchng.com
