Telcos lament 50% revenue loss to WhatsApp, Skype, etc

See who is complaining. 

I continued reading the above story to see at which point the writer Ozioma Ubabikoh would deliver the punchline that the behemoth telcos namely MTN, Airtel, Glo and Etisalat are suddenly on the verge of going under due to competition from outside of the cartel. Of course no such thing is about to happen. I do not see a Chief Pascal  Dozie (among many others) divesting from MTN and plowing back the proceeds into Diamond Bank! 

Simply put, the telecom operations remain an Eldorado, a goldmine, competition or not. That was exactly why a Chief Mike Adenuga saw an opening and exploited it, to the cheering approval of long suffering overcharged Nigerian consumers. Thankfully research and innovation in Silicon Valley and others across the globe ensured that there was still more to come. Hence BB-calls, Skype, WhatsApp, We-Chat, etc, etc. 

By the way, I am yet to see anyone shed a tear when the true pioneers on the CDMA platform were relentlessly pounded into the ground with nary a whimper from the government and the regulators. Engr Ernest Ndukwe and Dr Eugene Juwah are living witnesses.  

For those who are too young to remember, I hereby make a roll call of some of the dead entities: Intercellullar, Multi-Links, Mobitel, Celtel, Zoom, Starcomms, EMIS, MTS-1stWireless, VGC Communications, etc. It is quite easy to deduce why and how Tony Elumelu's Visaphone has not only survived but managed to thrive, sort of. A deep pocket?

I have just cross-checked the above list on the web-based IT Telecoms Digest. So I am not making this up. This is simply history. I had earlier briefly commented on this (sad) development from the standpoint of our non-existent Anti-Trust legislation. I had hoped that someone smarter and/or more committed than me would run with it. Sadly, nobody did. 

I was not trying to reveal anything new to either the government, the regulators or the big telecoms operators. They cannot pretend not to know that the days of scandalously large returns are over. Perhaps, the telcos will now be in the mood to finally admit ordinary folks into their stock ownership scheme, which the government foolishly(?) forgot to write into the original investment scheme. Better late than never.