I was a young lecturer at Lautech when GSM was launched in Nigeria in 2001. I could not afford one immediately because of the cost of purchasing a phone and the rates. It cost N50 per minute to make a call... Many blamed the cost of licensing the telecom providers - Econet , NITEL , and MTN - which was a whopping $285 million. To put the call rate in perspective, the minimum wage in Nigeria was N5,500 then. If you had one line, speaking for 10 minutes could cost you 10% of your salary. Fast forward to today, the rate is ₦13.80 per minute, a 72% drop since GSM came in 2001. Unlike in 2001, when there were no per-second rates , Nigerians can now make calls for a few seconds without being charged at a per-minute rate. There are also several options for consumers at cheaper rates on the surface - data plans of all kinds, combos of call and data, pay-as-you-go, etc. Many attribute these options and lower rates to technological advancement in the GSM space, including the proliferation ...