The firm said its primary mission is to use its expertise to nudge Nigerian MNOs (Mobile Network Operators) towards making the quality of their broadband networks as high as they could be.

“These networks are currently the main source of internet connectivity in Nigeria”, Engineer Remi Adeyeye, the president/CEO of Enext Wirelesss told Techeconomy.

“We continue to make NCC aware of our activities. Our primary mission is to use our knowledge and experience to nudge Nigerian MNOs towards making the quality of their broadband networks as high as they could be if the MNOs tried. These networks are currently the main source of internet connectivity in Nigeria.

“Our platform and related services can substantially improve the quality of mobile broadband networks and the experience of Nigerian users of those networks. By subscribing to our platform, MNOs, NCC, MSPs and other interested parties can make important contributions to the enhancement of the quality of mobile networks in Nigeria.

“We have been monitoring the networks since 2016. We have shared our findings with the MNOs. The goal has always been to improve the quality of experience of mobile broadband network subscribers in Nigeria.

“Since we started monitoring these networks we have seen networks so badly deployed that we stopped monitoring them.

“We shared our findings with the concerned operator who, two years later, confirmed that the poor quality was due to the fact that the network was still being deployed when we tested it. However, we subscribed to the service and paid for the data we used at that time.

“Our platform, named EMETRICS, helps to facilitate the deployment and continuous monitoring of high-quality mobile networks in Nigeria. It also allows the public to visualize mobile coverage quality at locations of interest as well as the likely throughput and packet latency at those locations.

The public can also contribute to the available throughput and packet latency records by running our speed test from the public visualization website HERE.

“Our platform allows MNOs to visualize the quality of their networks as seen by high quality end user equipment and use the data logged to enhance their quality.

“It facilitates the ability of mobile network equipment vendors to deploy high quality networks at much lower cost than ordinarily possible when relying on expensive logging and post-processing tools for necessary tests.

“The EMETRICS solution allows regulators to set practical thresholds for key performance indicators and independently verify efforts by MNOs to meet them”.

Adeyeye told Techeconomy that EMETRICS was specifically designed for the Nigerian market where the equipment and key engineering and deployment talents are often imported and focus on the experience of the ordinary end-user is minimal.

The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) recently commenced a review of its Regulatory Instruments and licensing framework to ensure that they are in line with the current realities.

Dr. Aminu Maida, said the review of Quality of Service Regulations by the NCC will incorporate Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for the fifth-generation technology (5G) and include KPIs for the Colocation Service Providers (TowerCos).

NCC’s key performance indicators (KPIs) for the quality of service (QoS) of Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) networks in Nigeria cover Call Setup Success Rate (CSSR), Drop Call Rate (DCR), and Stand-alone Dedicated Channel (SDCCH).

The impact of the quality of the networks on individuals, small and enterprises and the government activities is beyond measure.

The mobile network operators (MNOs) are deploying services hence the need to ensure that service rendered is in commensurate with money spent by the customers.

This is chief among reasons Enextgen Wireless’ team of engineers wake up every morning to monitor the networks, analyze and offer independent and professional advice on how to get the best quality of service for the citizens and businesses.

“We make salient portions of our reports available as public service. The MNOs and their vendors as well as any interested party have access to the reports. A more detailed version is also available for first-ass signal quality analysis by subscription”, said Engineer Remi Adeyeye, the President and Chairman of Enext Inc.

Continuing, he wrote in the latest report on KPIs published by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) and the infrastructure deployment by the MNOs:

“We were curious as to how the KPIs published by the NCC could diverge from our own record and experience as much as they do. We also found it particularly interesting that the vandalism of and tampering with their infrastructure that the MNOs often complain about appear to have no impact on providing such excellent KPIs as published on NCC website. Although this could have been made possible by herculean efforts to maintain excellent KPIs by the MNOS, we don’t enjoy such excellent quality in our daily use of the networks”, Adeyeye said.

“Our primary focus since 2016 has been mobile broadband networks (4G LTE and (now) 5G NR). However, since most of the KPIs that are related to Radio Access Networks published by NCC address mostly their impact on voice connections which primarily use 2G and 3G networks in Nigeria, we decided to run verification tests for two of the key KPIs – Drop Call Rate and Call Setup Success Rate.

“We had one Call Origination phone for each of the four major national MNOs in our test vehicle making periodic calls to another phone on the same network but stationed at our Ibadan office, for the first test.
For the second test, we had all 8 phones (UE) placed in the test vehicle with the same calling pattern.

Report from the Enextgen Wireless tests:

In-vehicle placement of UEs

Mobile UEs to stationary UEs KPIs compared with published KPIs

KPIs for all UEs in the same vehicle compared with published KPIs

Needed changes

Four Key Findings in the Report

Enextgen bluntly stated that the formulas for Drop Call Rate and Connection Failure Rate used for the reports from the MNOs to NCC are suspect.

“The fact that they are could not possibly have been lost on the MNOs, given their expertise in this matter.

“A logical explanation then seems to be that the MNOs find the omissions in the formulas advantageous in that the inaccurate results they yield make their KPIs look better.

Secondly, “the KPIs that are published on NCC’s website do not support the repeated warnings about the negative impact of vandalism and willful destruction of telecom facilities on the networks. The KPIs portray networks that are almost perfect.

Thirdly, the independent report by Enextgen indicates that both MTN and Airtel claims that are very difficult to verify.

“Both claim they have deployed VoLTE nationwide. Yet most, if not all, of the calls we make on our Volte-capable phones are processed in Circuit Switched Fall Back, not VoLTE.  In promoting their VoLTE deployments, the MNOs touch on the benefits of VoLTE. We find that peculiar since they do not use VoLTE to handle most of our calls.

Fourtly, “Airtel has claimed that it has equipped all of its cell sites for LTE. Yet, it is very easy to find along any stretch of many routes, cell sites where 4G UEs are served in 3G or even 2G only”.

In conclusion, the first case with mobile to stationary calls depicts a more challenging condition since the mobile phones were all inside the office where signal quality for all the MNOs need improvement. The results reflect this.

The second case with all mobile devices in the same moving vehicle depicts a very favorable condition for the MNOs. Many of the measured KPIs are not too far off from the values published.

They might have been even closer if the more appropriate formulas had been used for the published KPIs since the reported KPIs would have been worse.

“There are substantial outliers. Our hope is that the concerned MNOs will make necessary improvement”, the report contains.

Recommendations

Enegten Wireless has made available its platform – EMETRICS – to the MNOs, their MSPs and the NCC.

It is a national platform for evaluation and enhancement of the quality of mobile networks in Nigeria.  The platform which costs about N11 million (eleven million nairas) per year to subscribe will allow NCC, for instance, to verify the claims made by MNOs.

It will further allow MNOs to verify the claims made by their vendors such as Nokia, Ericsson, Huawei, ZTE and others.

The emetrics allows the vendors to provide much higher network quality to the public from RF signal perspective. The very nature of our beloved country makes this necessary.

“”In other word, this is a platform that allows indigenous peoples and enterprises of Nigeria to enjoy the benefits of having the best networks possible when MNOs and their MSPs voluntarily provide visibility into the quality of their networks instead of having us take at face value their words or even those of our government”, the company said.

You can find detailed report here: Ibadan, January 2023 – Enext Wireless, Inc.

The following article contains a summary of the NIWBQR report.  After the summary, the team presented screenshots from the Enterprise EMETRICS for MTN, that shows how the data they collected can be used by interested MNOs to analyze the quality of their RF coverage.

The EMETRICS screenshot shows the experience-based classification of the quality of RF coverage.

However, the user can use the reports for RSRP, RSRQ and SINR to come to their own decision about RF quality.

Route Covered for Data Collection

NIWBQR Report

NIWBQR Ranking

Emetrics

RSRP

RSRQ

SINR

Downlink throughput

Uplink throughput

Packet Latency

Screenshots for MTN. Available for all at the website here.

The first deployment of LTE in Nigeria was in 2014 by Smile Telecom in Ibadan.

By 2016, Ntel, Bitflux and Smile had initiated efforts to deploy LTE in Lagos. Shortly after, the major national MNOs joined the effort.

By 2018, all of the four major network operators had LTE footprint in substantial parts of the country. This year has only seen increased 4G LTE coverage in Nigeria.

During the fourth quarter of this year, MTN began offering commercial 5G service using, primarily, its own routers.

“Unfortunately, unlike 2G and 3G networks, the regulatory body, NCC, has not established KPIs for monitoring the quality of the 4G networks or documented significant efforts made to encourage ongoing maintenance of high quality for these networks”, Enextgen Wireless Limited lamented in this report.

“The impact of efforts being made to minimize vandalism and improve the quality of public infrastructure can only be appreciated through ongoing monitoring. This is important because mobile broadband is indispensable to a vast majority of small enterprises and ordinary residents of the country.

“We have been carrying on the responsibility of monitoring these networks since 2016. We have evolved our process to where we now have a unique platform for not only monitoring the networks but also facilitating the efforts of interested network operators to maintain the best networks possible, a unique asset not available to other network operators in other countries”.

The 2022 4G LTE Spectrum Utilization Efficiency by MTN, Glo, Airtel and 9Mobile report focuses on benchmarking the quality of 4G LTE networks in Lagos and Ibadan – cities where Enextgen Wireless engineers have most consistently collected data in all four major networks.

“However, we have data in substantial parts of the country on MTN and one or two other networks, including data from some of the remote areas”.

The report available to TechEconomy uses data from the company’s Enterprise EMETRICS, which is available, by subscription, to interested MNOs, to rank the four network operators according to the quality of 4G LTE signal and packet delays:

Overview:

In the following pages, Enextgen Wireless ranked the quality of mobile RF signal used to provide 4G LTE services by the four major network operators in Lagos and Ibadan

“We base the rankings for EMETRICS according to the ratio of (green + blue + yellow) METRICS bins to (green + blue + yellow) RSRP bins.

“We base the ranking for Latency on the ratio of (green + blue + yellow) Latency bins to the overall latency bins (green, blue, yellow, brown, red)”, the report reads.

In each case, the one with the highest quotient ranks the highest:

According to the report, Nigeria mobile broadband ranks 56th in the internet quality index due to low internet speeds.

“The country has one of the slowest broadband connection speeds globally (13.45 Mbps), ranking 105th, and slightly faster mobile internet (17.91 Mbps), ranking 96th,” said the report. “However, the country’s broadband speed growth is one of the fastest on the planet, ranking 16th.”

Interestingly, the telecom industry regulator in Nigeria – the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), has set of KPIs to ensure the Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) maintain appreciable quality of service (QoS). But how are the MNOs fairing? Can you as a consumer help to improve the quality of mobile broadband in Nigeria? Enext believes you can!

Enext Wireless, through its dynamic National Independent Wireless Broadband Quality Reporting (NIWBQR), provides the public and the Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) a level of visibility into the quality of LTE access in the country.

Early last year, Enext Wireless showcased few components of its flagship – Enext Metrics.

Quality of Mobile Broadband in Nigeria

• 1G and 2G were for mobile voice connection services
• 3G was for mobile voice and some data connection services
• 4G is for internet data connection services which allow for multiple forms of communication – voice, video, multimedia, internet of things, etc.
• 5G extends the data communication capabilities of 4G to increase connection speed and density and allow for the creation of unique communication services within the same network (network slicing).
• All of the above depend on effective utilization of the airwave. And the more advanced the standard, the higher the demand on the quality of the utilization of the airwave.
• It is not sufficient to accept what the service providers say about the quality of their networks when users can independently verify that quality
• EMETRICS (available here) provides a means for such independent verification

How you can help

• Use EMETRICS to find the quality of mobile broadband (LTE or 5G) at your location.
• Let your service provider know you would like them to provide measurement data to Enextgen or use Enext Wireless’ measurement tool (Enextlog), if there is no data for your location or area.
• Share with us any observed lack of correlation between its ranking and your experience at your location.
• Spread the news that Enext Wireless provides information on the quality of mobile broadband.
  • The more users, the more areas covered
  • The more areas covered the higher the incentive for the operators to pay attention to the quality of their mobile broadband networks.
• Realize that this service is offered by a company whose primary interest is in looking out for the Nigerian public
• Understand that quality of service rating should flow from those receiving the service to those offering it, not the other way around.
• Don’t rely on self-serving quality reports from network operators.

Usage Guide

• The key information is conveyed in color codes
  • You have LTE coverage if the EMETRICS rank is not RED
  • RED means not to expect reliable LTE coverage.
  • The other codes – saddle brown, yellow, blue and green are for use in optimizing RF quality.
• Toggle Full Screen to change MNOs.
• Use Report Selection for viewing the other measurements that are primarily for technical use.
  • Ping is for packet latency which provides some indication of application layer performance
  • Uplink and downlink throughput data will show up under the appropriate selection (we often do not collect these)

The focus of its measurements is to improve RF quality, which is the foundation for reliable mobile internet access.

To maximize investment opportunities telecom operators must go beyond just building base stations and mounting the mast. The optimal network quality must be delivered to ensure that subscribers get the best quality Internet service.

The Nigeria Communications Commission (NCC) has a huge responsibility to continue to ensure that network operator are constantly checked to deliver an optimized network at various locations across the country.

One of the leading Engineering companies that focuses on improving user experience in mobile broadband wireless telecommunication services, Enextgen Wireless Ltd. is at the forefront of providing an interactive network coverage map to check broadband quality across Nigeria.

Emetrics

Enextgen Wireless developed a solution called Emetrics to support mobile network operators like MTN, Airtel, Glo, 9Mobile, and other network providers to offer excellent mobile broadband network services to their subscribers.

Emetrics Service

The service allows mobile subscribers to visualize the quality of LTE Radio Frequency deployment in their locations

“Our solution can be used by the network providers including the Nigeria Communications Commission (NCC) to compare some network key performance indicators (KPI) among the network operators,” Abibat Dunmoye, Director of Engineering, Enextgen Wireless said.

Enextgen Wireless was present at the Nigerian Telecommunications Indigenous Content Expo (NTICE2022) between August 1 and 2, 2022 at Landmark Centre, Victoria Island, Lagos to showcase the Emetrics solution to stakeholders.

The NCC’s Executive Vice Chairman, Prof. Umar Danbatta; ​the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Prof. Isa Pantami, and some notable stakeholders were at the Enextgen Wireless booth to see the solution.

According to Abibat, the NCC, ​ network regulators can adopt the solution and use it for benchmarking and comparison among the operators.

”​What the mobile network operators claim to be providing to the user in terms of network quality, are they actually providing it? the NCC and mobile broadband network providers can use Emetrics to perform benchmarking and RF monitoring to know what the consumer experiences are and they can use it to identify areas that need improvements.”

With Emetrics, one can monitor the mobile network signal coverage, and signal quality of an area​ and ​can also be used​ by corporate organizations, device manufacturers, fleet operators, Small/Medium/Large Businesses, government agencies, industry, and market analysts to enhance the quality of their in-building wireless connectivity.

“The LTE coverage tends to be a major source when it comes to internet backhaul, it penetrates some of the rural areas and major urban areas. Due to its wider coverage, a lot of users depend on it for their internet access connectivity, because of that there is a need for continuous monitoring and improvement when required.”

According to Abibat, even in Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial city, there are areas we identified to have network performance issues which we pointed out to the network providers. “We subscribed to a particular network provider at a time for office internet connectivity and the experience was not encouraging.”

Abibat said it was difficult to make conference calls at the time, however, added that with the help of Emetrics, we were able to identify the mobile broadband network provider with the best network coverage quality, and also we were able to improve the network quality with the help of our In-building wireless solution.

Enextgen Wireless has been tracking LTE deployment in Nigeria and bringing to the attention of LTE service providers Radio Frequency deployment issues that lead to sub-optimal offered quality of service.

According to Gbadega Adeyeye, Business Development Director, Enextgen Wireless, in a situation where a network performance issue is being identified on a particular network provider, Enextgen shares reports with the network operators.

In addition, we provide Engineering and technical support services to help organizations or mobile broadband network users to enhance their in-building wireless connectivity experience using our Enextlog data collection devices, Emetrics data visualization platform, Premetrics analytics dashboard, and other components, Gbadega said.