Nigerians may soon have a cheaper option for making international calls following the entry of ESDIAC, an indigenous telecommunications company seeking to address the high cost of international calls and connectivity challenges.
The development comes more than two decades after the liberalisation of Nigeria’s telecommunications sector opened up access to mobile telephone services and transformed the country’s communication landscape.
In January 2001, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) auctioned Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) licences to operators, including MTN, Econet, which later became Airtel, and other entrants.
The Federal Government reportedly generated more than $1.2 billion from the licensing exercise, with operators paying about $285 million each for their licences.
Econet made the first GSM call in Nigeria in May 2001, followed by MTN in August of the same year, ushering in a new era of mobile telecommunications. Globacom subsequently joined the market, further expanding competition and access to telephone services.
The transformation was a sharp departure from the era when Nigerians had to queue at public telephone kiosks to make calls.
At a public event in Lagos, former President Olusegun Obasanjo recalled the difficulties Nigerians experienced before the advent of GSM services and the transformation that followed the liberalisation of the sector.
“People had to queue at telephone kiosks to make calls. It was a far cry from the seamless communication we enjoy today, but then came the mobile telephone revolution,” he said.
The revolution also ended the dominance of the once-powerful Nigerian Telecommunications Limited (NITEL), which had been the country’s national telecommunications monopoly.
Prof. Abiodun Musa Aibinu, a mechatronics engineer at the Federal University of Technology, Minna, said mobile communication had significantly contributed to economic activities across different sectors.
“Needless to say that mobile communication has become a powerful tool for liberating Nigerians from the shackles of the once powerful, but now extinct, national telecoms monopoly, popularly known as the Nigerian Telecommunication (NITEL); it has significantly contributed positively in boosting economic activities in all sectors in Nigeria,” he said.
Data from the Global System for Mobile Communications Association (GSMA) indicate that Nigeria had approximately 192.2 million active telephone subscriptions as of mid-2026, with national teledensity estimated at about 86.6 per cent.
GSMA Intelligence also estimates total cellular mobile connections at approximately 183 million, representing about 74.9 per cent of the population, while broadband subscriptions stood at 123.1 million.
Despite the impressive expansion, challenges persist, particularly poor quality of service, which continues to frustrate subscribers.
Aibinu identified call failures, dropped calls and weak signal strength as some of the problems confronting users and network operators.
“There is increasing poor quality of service experienced by subscribers, which manifests in the forms of call failure, call drops, and low received signal strength. These problems have continuously been raising a great deal of worries and uncertainty among the populace and the network providers,” he said.
Beyond network quality, however, the high cost of international calls remains another major concern for Nigerian subscribers.
Available tariff information indicates that international calls on standard pay-as-you-go plans can cost between N30 and N1,500 per minute, depending on the destination and network operator.
It is against this backdrop that ESDIAC, a new entrant into the Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) market, is positioning its services as a cheaper alternative for Nigerians seeking to communicate with people abroad.
The company’s Chief Executive Officer, Mr Austin Ugbebor, said its platform was developed to address the high cost of international calls and limited connectivity options, particularly for Nigerians travelling abroad.
