Telecommunications service providers have ruled out opening about 150 base stations destroyed by insurgents in the northern parts of the country until some normalcy is restored in the region.
This means that telecommunications subscribers in the affected areas would have to live with little or no telecommunications services.
A base transceiver station (BTS) or cell site is the central nervous system of telecommunications allowing subscribers to make and receive calls and other services.
But the facilities have become targets of insurgents especially in recent times.
Gbenga Adebayo, chairman, Association of Licensed Telecommunications Operators of Nigeria (ALTON) said that vandalism of telecom facilities are affecting the quality of service the operators are providing.
Steven Evans, chief executive officer, Etisalat Nigeria, said over that 30 of its sites in Borno belong to this category and cannot be restarted because of security risk.
He said that those cell sites however affected its quality of service resulting to loss of 1% of its report in May in Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) key performance indicator report.
Apart from attacks on BTS, other telecom equipment have suffered deliberate destruction by some persons across the country.
Ttelecommunications companies in Nigeria said they spend some $90 million annually in repairs of fibre network cut by activities of government contractors building roads and vandals.

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