*SMEs lament: Our livelihood goes with poor network connections
•Nigeria recorded over 5,000 fibre-optic cuts in six months – NCC
•Telcos blame fiber cuts, vandalism, power
By Juliet Umeh
For Nigeria’s growing army of internet-reliant entrepreneurs and workers, the network bars on a mobile phone can mean the difference between earning a living and going home empty-handed.For an online seller, a lost connection can mean a missed order; for a ride-hailing driver, a missed trip; for a POS operator, a failed transaction; and for an online tutor, a disrupted class.Increasingly, the internet is no longer just a tool for communication. For millions of workers and small businesses, it has become the marketplace, payment channel, classroom, dispatch system and customer-service desk.But when the connection disappears, so does the livelihood built around it.For Mrs Anna Nso, a small business centre owner in Aba, Abia State, a poor network has become a daily battle with frustrated customers, financial losses and mounting anxiety.One day, a network glitch turned a routine electricity payment into a costly mistake.“My husband wanted to recharge N1,900 electricity bill for a customer, but because of the network problem, he mistakenly recharged N19,000,” Nso told Vanguard.“The network stressed him so much that he made the mistake.”
