Site Acquisition For Telecom Base Stations In Southwest Nigeria: Concerns, Challenges And Prospects

Owing to the revolution in the telecom landscape, the need for space to house GSM equipment so as to provide satisfactory network coverage for the Nation has intensified. Site acquisition activities have deepened due to competition and need to increase market share by individual network operators. But these telecom operators continually encounter various degrees of problems when acquiring these sites and these often come with resultant implications. The study aims to ascertain and observe the conspicuous issues and logjams associated with acquiring sites for telecom base stations in the Southwest Nigeria, and also evaluate their occurrence rate and establish the consequential implications of these evident site acquisition difficulties. To sample the opinion of telecom service providers’ site acquisition operatives and consultants, both direct observation and mail questionnaire were employed. From the analysis of data based on 400 telecom base stations, 11 distinctive site acquisition problems are identified, and further analysis reveals the extent of occurrence and the diverse consequential repercussions of these logjams. Restive attitudes of community youths, burdensome financial terms by regulatory authorities, overbearing bureaucratic practice by the telecom operator and uncooperative attitudes of host community heads (and adjoining landowners) are the top-ranked logjams. The study, however, suggests certain practicable initiatives and viewpoints to check these barriers.