This development follows the Nigerian Communications Commission’s (NCC) reluctance to approve a tariff increase, which operators have sought to mitigate the impact of naira’s devaluation and rising inflation.

The operators have resorted to load shedding, a practice where services are deliberately reduced in specific areas to prevent system-wide failures and cut costs. 

Although the operators have not officially confirmed this move, there is noticeable prioritisation of service in high-revenue areas, leading to varying service quality across different regions.

The telecom sector in Nigeria is currently faced with several challenges, including the escalating costs of diesel, maintenance, and infrastructure, compounded by a rapidly depreciating naira. 

FDIs in Nigeria’s Telecom Sector: Opportunities and Risks in 2024

For instance, MTN Nigeria, with nearly 80 million subscribers, reported a huge loss of ₦137 billion after tax for the first time since its 2019 listing, primarily due to foreign exchange losses amounting to ₦740 billion. 

Similarly, Airtel Africa, which serves over 50 million Nigerian subscribers, recorded a loss of $89 million for its fiscal year ending in March 2024, largely due to foreign exchange challenges.

The economic downturn has greatly affected the sector’s investment capacity. Airtel Nigeria’s CEO, Carl Cruz, spoke on the sharp devaluation of the naira and how it has hindered the industry’s growth, given its reliance on imported infrastructure. 

MTN Nigeria’s CEO, Karl Toriola, stated that the sector is on the brink of collapse unless urgent interventions, such as tariff increases, are implemented.

The situation has become so dire that operators are now exploring load shedding as a cost-saving measure. This strategy involves reducing the number of operational base stations, particularly in low-revenue areas, to cut costs. 

This has inevitably led to poor service quality in these regions, as the remaining infrastructure struggles to cope with the demand.

The NCC has not issued an official response to the operators’ demands, leaving the industry in a state of uncertainty. The regulatory body’s silence has increased fears of continuous service disruptions becoming large if a resolution is not reached soon.

In the world of cyber security, it has become accepted that new technologies are crucial to keeping up with sophisticated cyber criminals hiding deep within the web.

In the physical world, security also needs to keep pace with increasing crime and more sophisticated criminals.

It’s here that the intersection between the physical and virtual world occurs. The advent of cloud computing opened a whole new world of surveillance, sensors, monitoring, and analytics.

The speed of innovation means that solutions continue to evolve, whether in the form of off-site monitoring, pro-active security solutions powered by artificial intelligence, access control and more.

2023 will see more of this, as the leading security service providers and vendors seek to bring the best products to market.

Guardian Eye, for example, will be bringing night cameras that can see and record in colour. This is a fundamental shift from the mainstay of black and white, or saturated, images. The implications for investigations are huge, and this technology represents the next frontier in camera monitoring.

Behind the cameras, indeed behind any IoT sensor or device, is the power that cloud-based analytics can bring to security solutions. Again, speaking for ourselves, we are constantly working on our algorithms and researching the best that technology can bring to ensure monitoring and analytics continues evolving to increase security capabilities.

It is an exciting world, where analytics can provide a situational awareness not seen before so that people and property can enjoy proactive protection because of technology’s ability to pick up trends and anomalies in near real-time.

The ability to review hours upon hours of video footage in minutes and pick up patterns or red flags is priceless, and can rapidly speed up response and investigations.

Ultimately, the ability to recognise and pick up patterns turns a surveillance camera into a super guard working in real-time. Expect to see more development in this field throughout the year.

However, from a South African perspective, the single biggest trend in the world of security is going to be how service providers and vendors come up with solutions that get around load shedding. From a security perspective, load shedding presents a massive risk.

Many alarm systems, electric fences, automatic gates, surveillance systems and access control solutions have some degree of backup in place. However, the battery back-ups in these solutions, especially electric fences, alarm systems and automatic gate motors, weren’t designed to withstand extended periods of no power that occur regularly.

These batteries are becoming damaged as they are depleted and sometimes not fully charged before the next power cut.

The result is that many residences and homes have to deal with literal blackouts, where security is non-existent, a lot sooner than they would have before this latest, extended bout of load shedding.

Security service providers and vendors are working day and night to find ways to ensure that their solutions are up and running, from surveillance, to access control, to proactive and reactive security products.

From a Guardian Eye perspective, we are part of the Vivica Group, and our sister company, Stage Zero, which will be launched to the public soon, provides us with a competitive advantage.

Through our sister company, we have access to innovative battery backup systems, and solar and wind generation capability, which we are currently exploring to ensure that our solutions and offerings continue as normal despite Eskom’s woes. The solution simply must be that load shedding should not affect security, anywhere, in any way.

Stage Zero, on the other hand, gains access to Guardian Eye’s nerve centre which equips it with state-of-the-art monitoring and analytics for its wide suite of solutions that will be deployed widely.

Ultimately, the differentiator between security providers lies in how they leverage the latest technology to answer real, pressing challenges on the ground.

In the case of South African challenges, security providers need to not only ensure their products leverage the best technology such as AI-driven analytics capabilities, but also that they invest in the best backup and renewable energy technology to ensure their products and services are accessible when the power is out.