As 9Mobile Departs on Sunday
Nigerian techies really love America. According to Hub8, 72% of our hosted sites are domiciled in U.S. Those sites include the .ng and .com.ng. It is really unfortunate that we cannot keep anything in Nigeria. Government has been campaigning, promoting .ng and .com.ng domains. But as soon as the users acquire them, they put them in hosting providers in U.S. Honestly, I do not see how that will change in coming years because even most of the local hosting firms are resellers of American hosting companies: it is tough to run a 24/7 business when there is no electricity.
About 72 percent of Nigeria’s Internet revenues have been confirmed going to the United States of America (USA), instead of accruing to the country. According to HUB8, ... majority of .ng and .com.ng websites in Nigeria are still hosted in the United States, making the country to be experiencing major capital flight in that realm. Hub8 noted that out of the 34,000 sites, less than 1,000 are located in Nigeria, which is only 2.3 per cent of the total.
Meanwhile, Guardian thinks that Globacom (the operator of Glo) will likely win the 9Mobile (nee Etisalat Nigeria) bid to become the largest mobile operator in Nigeria, ahead of MTN come Jan 1 2018 when the 9Mobile bid concludes. This will be a big dynamic change in the $70 billion telecom market in Nigeria.
Globacom, according to industry trend is seriously looking for every means to depose MTN, and become the largest operator in Nigeria. Market Analysts believe that the battle for the soul of 9Mobile rests strictly between Globacom and Airtel, because of their financial muscles and experiences in the Nigerian market
I had predicted many months that Glo will absorb 9Mobile and now they have about five remaining bidders, we are closer than before. But even if Glo loses to say Airtel, the other bidders (Helios, Teleology and Smile) are not experienced mobile operators and can give the network to Glo to run for them. In that case, Glo will earn management fees.
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Two things will happen: if Glo becomes bigger than MTN, and continues to use price to compete, we could see further reduction in price. But if it becomes comfortable due to its economies of scale, consumers may lose as prices will go up. Yet, I do not see any major problem on pricing as Nigeria will continue to have three strong operators in Glo, MTN and Airtel.
On the hosting of local businesses largely domiciled in the US, we have to first admit and agree that patriotism has limitations. So it would be foolhardy to believe that with patriotism you could somehow remain afloat, even when other metrics say otherwise. As someone who also do these things for clients, two things to consider: uptime and cost. Interestingly, the two are interrelated; for a Nigerian hosting firm to run 24/7, obviously that would be felt on the pricing side of the packages, else the business might not last beyond first quarter. Most times due to our enthusiasm and obsession with trendy stuff and buzzwords, especially with regard to tech innovation; we tend forget that as a country, we still have to take of the fundamentals. There are things you can never manoeuvre, power in this case is one of them.
As for Glo winning the 9mobile takeover bid, let's hope that its data network 'slowness' does not infect the 9mobile's data speed, which has remained the best among all the telcos. Consumers aren't interested in who becomes the biggest, but rather, more interested in who offers best quality of service, with cheapest price to boot. Let's see how it goes...
Nigerian companies suffers under still environment.
Tax
Infrastructure deficit
Instabilities in policies
Let' praise few entrepreneurs that have strive in the face of abnormality . I wish globacom well.