Abolaji Adebayo 
The President of the National Association of Telecoms Subscribers (NATCOMS), Chief Deolu Ogunbanjo, has tasked the Association of Licensed Telecoms Operators of Nigeria (ALTON) to provide the technology needed for seamless transmission of election results in 2023. While speaking with New Telegraph, Ogunbanjo said subscribers, who are dominantly the electorate, were interested in electronic transmission of the 2023 general elections’s results. He noted that the telecoms operators were in the best position to provide the technology needed for the e-transmission of the results.
The subscribers’ association leader said the association was in support of ALTON to use its technology to monitor the election results in 2023. Ogunbanjo, who noted that some political parties were raising concern, testified that ALTON had the capacity for the electronic transmission of the result if given the chance, as he urged government and other stakeholders to support ALTON to provide the required technology for the seamless electronic transmission of the election results.
“The association has the capacity to transmit the result electronically but some raised concern over the weekend. But yesterday, the ALTON came out to say they are ready and capable for the transmission of the election results electronically in 2023.
“We, subscribers body, under the National Association of Telecoms Subscribers (NATCOMS), are backing ALTON. “We are also urging the ALTON to gear up and improve their system so that electronic transmission of the election results will be seamless. Nigeria is ripe for that and we should encourage government to buy into that,” he noted.
The association had said that what is required was a minimum of 3G coverage, that is, third generation coverage, which is able to send voice, data, text and video information simultaneously at high quality with minimal latency and it is reliable. The president of the association, Gbenga Adebayo, had said: “Where added interfaces are required either to compress or encrypt the information for better security, it is easier to do it on 3G networks than it is on 2G. “So, the requirement would be to have sites that are covering areas that have polling centres upgraded to 3G and this will be to increase the backbone capacity to those sites.
“It will also include replacing and upgrading the capacity of the last mile radios on those sites as well as other interfaces that will now deliver 3G services above the 2G that is currently in those locations. “In summary, it is to increase the transmission capacity to those sites, then upgrade the elements that deliver last mile services from 2G to 3G.
“If there are sites that are connected to the national network by radio, you need to increase the capacity of the radio, so to say. If there are sites that are connected on the route of the fibre, instead of replacing or upgrading the radio, you just need to connect them to the national fibre backbone, which would be the best recommendation actually.
“This is because, again, radio is susceptible to interference but fibre is point-to-point and can deliver high speeds, irrespective of distance. So, the recommendation would be that for such critical sites, they should be connected to the national backbone via fibre optic rings. That would be the first point.
“The second is that the interfaces there have to be upgraded from 2G to 3G and the antennal elements also have to be upgraded, in essence, the last mile radios—the radios that deliver optimal services from the cell sites to the terminals, that is, the devices have to be upgraded from 2G to 3G.”
