Nigeria is the first African country in banning mobile lotteries

The decision taken by Nigeria, the largest African telecommunications market, is oriented to establish the order in the telecommunications sector and refkects the way of thinking by other regional regulators due to the poor services offered. Competence has had influence on the fact that operators cannot improve their services and connections.

With the increment of the inflation on the region and the low cost of communications-due to the war of prices- profits of the operators have fallen, and so taxes paid to the government.

Nigeria decision will have secondary effects  in other African countries where there are operators such as MTN, Airtel, Globacom and Etisalat.

Through promotions, operators offer up to two hours in free minutes for a limited period of time. However, this has brought congestion on the networks, because suscribers try to use all their free minutes in this period, according to Edith Mwale, an Analyst of Telecommunications of the Center for TIC Development.

At the same time, operators generate lottery winnings because the customers send messages that costa round 50 cents of dollar per message, trying to win.

"Competition is the cause of the promotions and the lotteries because each operator wants to maintain and attract more customers in its network, but in the process, they commit the quality of the services,” said Mwale.

The action taken by Nigeria, says Mwale, must be limited by all the regional regulators in order to bring a better quality to the sector, while the network is congested, which originates a decline in the number of calls, connection failures and slowness on the delivery of messages.