Why Call Reliability Powers Nigeria’s Creator Economy

A lot of Nigeria’s creator economy is judged in public: views, streams, shares, brand deals, ticket sales. But one of the most important parts of the whole system is invisible. Network reliability—the unglamorous work that makes sure calls connect, data sessions hold, and billing is accurate—quietly decides whether creators can publish consistently, collaborate across cities, and get paid on time.

When telecom infrastructure fails, it’s not just an inconvenience. It’s missed client calls, delayed uploads, broken livestreams, failed two-factor authentication for accounts, and stalled campaign reporting. That’s why I pay attention when an infrastructure professional like Ibikunle Peters describes his decade-long work “keeping the lights on” across companies like Huawei, Airtel, and 9Mobile (now T2 Mobile). His story is a reminder: creativity scales only as far as connectivity allows.

This post is part of the How AI Is Powering Nigeria’s Digital Content & Creator Economy series, and it makes a simple argument: before AI can amplify Nigeria’s digital content, telecom reliability has to hold steady—and AI is increasingly how operators keep it steady.

The creator economy runs on “boring” telecom reliability

Answer first: If you want Nigeria’s creator economy to keep growing in 2026 and beyond, the biggest enabler isn’t another editing app—it’s always-on connectivity supported by strong telecom operations.

From a subscriber’s perspective, calling someone is a tap. From an operator’s perspective, it’s a chain of systems that must behave perfectly, every time, for millions of people at once. Peters puts it bluntly: if a major network goes down nationwide, panic spreads. That’s not exaggeration. Phone calls are still the fallback channel when WhatsApp calls fail, when a creator is traveling, or when a brand manager needs clarity now.

For creators, stable telecoms underpin:

• Collaboration: producers, artists, editors, managers, and clients coordinate in real time.
• Distribution: consistent upload speeds and fewer dropped sessions improve publishing cadence.
• Monetisation: payment confirmations, OTPs, customer support calls, and campaign reporting depend on uptime.
• Trust: audiences punish inconsistency. One unstable livestream can cost a creator weeks of growth.

And here’s the part many people miss: the creator economy isn’t only TikTok and YouTube. It’s also customer support lines for ecommerce sellers, call centres for online courses, and voice-based sales for small businesses. Call reliability is still revenue.

What actually happens when you make a phone call (and why it matters)

Answer first: A “simple” call is an orchestrated handshake between radio coverage, identity systems, routing decisions, and billing—meaning reliability requires both engineering discipline and constant monitoring.

Peters gives a practical crash course into the behind-the-scenes systems that make voice work.

The mast: your first handshake with the network

The starting point is the base transceiver station (BTS)—what most people call the mast. Peters compares it to a Wi‑Fi router serving a defined area. That analogy is useful because it highlights the obvious truth creators feel every day: distance and congestion change quality.

If your neighbourhood’s site is congested during peak hours, your call quality drops and your data sessions struggle. For creators, that peak time is often the exact time you want to post (evening) or go live (weekends).

Controllers and registers: routing plus identity

Masts don’t work alone. They coordinate through controller and core network components. A key system Peters mentions is the home location register (HLR)—the database that helps the network answer basic questions instantly:

• Who are you (SIM identity and subscriber profile)?
• Where are you currently registered?
• Are you calling someone on the same network (on-net) or another network (interconnect)?
• What rate should apply (local, national, international, special numbers, restrictions)?

This matters for creators because these “identity and routing” layers are also where many fraud and abuse controls live. If the system is too strict, legitimate calls fail. If it’s too loose, scammers flourish and networks clamp down aggressively—often hurting good users.

Billing accuracy is part of reliability

Peters’ background as a billing application engineer points to a less talked-about truth: billing is user experience.

When creators complain that “my data finished quickly,” or brands dispute usage costs on a campaign device pool, that’s not just a customer service issue. It’s a systems integrity issue. Networks have to ensure the correct rating and charging is applied—especially during promotions, bundles, and roaming.

For the creator economy, billing clarity affects:

• whether creators can predict production costs,
• whether agencies can reconcile campaign spend,
• whether small businesses keep lines active instead of churning.

“Keeping the lights on” is a national capability (BVAS proved it)

Answer first: Nigeria’s 2023 elections showed telecom operations at national scale: provisioning, configuration, field coordination, and troubleshooting under real pressure.

One of the most concrete moments in Peters’ story is the deployment of over 68,000 SIM cards to support the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) during Nigeria’s 2023 general elections. That’s not a routine “SIM activation” task. It’s logistics, compliance, configuration, monitoring, and rapid incident response across thousands of locations.

What makes this relevant to the creator economy is the shared operational shape:

• Many creators now run distributed teams (shoot in Abuja, edit in Lagos, publish from Port Harcourt).
• Brands execute nationwide activations with field staff capturing content and sending files in real time.
• Platforms and fintechs depend on telecoms for authentication and last-mile connectivity.

Elections put telecoms under the harshest spotlight: tight timelines, zero room for failure, and public consequences. If a team can coordinate tens of thousands of endpoints for BVAS, it shows what’s possible when planning and operations are done properly.

Where AI fits: reliability at scale needs automation

Answer first: As Nigeria’s data usage grows and content gets heavier (HD video, livestreams, AI-generated media), telecoms can’t rely on manual monitoring—AI and automation are becoming the default approach to keep networks stable.

Peters notes that AI adoption is accelerating across telecoms and beyond, and that there’s “more beyond prompting” when it comes to real enterprise automation. He’s right, and here’s how that connects directly to creators.

AI use cases inside telecoms that creators will feel

You may not see these systems, but you’ll feel them in fewer outages and smoother sessions:

1. Anomaly detection for outages

   • AI models can flag unusual drops in call setup success rates, rising packet loss, or abnormal traffic patterns before customers flood support lines.

2. Predictive maintenance for network equipment

   • If a site’s power subsystem or backhaul link shows warning signals, maintenance can be scheduled before it fails during an event or livestream.

3. Traffic forecasting and capacity planning

   • Nigeria’s peak patterns are predictable (evenings, holidays, match days, major entertainment events). Better forecasting means fewer “everyone is online and nothing works” moments.

4. Automated root-cause analysis

   • When something breaks, the slow part is often diagnosis. AI can correlate alarms across radio, transmission, core, and billing systems.

5. Fraud and spam call mitigation

   • Cleaner voice networks mean fewer blanket restrictions that accidentally block legitimate business lines.

There’s a bigger point here: AI is not only a creator tool (for scripts, captions, thumbnails). It’s also an infrastructure tool that makes the pipes stronger.

Data centres and the “AI backbone” in Nigeria

Operators and infrastructure players are investing in data centres because AI workloads need compute close to users. For the creator economy, local compute and stronger infrastructure translate into:

• lower latency for live sessions,
• more stable cross-platform uploads,
• better uptime for creator tools hosted locally,
• more room for Nigerian startups building AI products for creators.

If Nigeria wants to export digital culture at scale—music, film, comedy, education—then the technical foundation has to keep pace.

Career lesson from telecoms: creators can borrow the same discipline

Answer first: Peters’ career shows that sustainable success comes from systems thinking: learn the stack, build operational habits, and invest in people skills.

Peters didn’t study telecoms in school. He studied chemistry, then taught himself computing fundamentals, moved into surveillance (monitoring and incident response), and later expanded into SQL, database management, and Linux—because mission-critical systems often run on Linux.

Creators and creator-led teams can apply the same model. The tools differ, but the mindset is identical.

A practical “creator ops” checklist (borrowed from telecom thinking)

If you want fewer chaotic weeks and more consistent output, treat your content business like a system:

• Redundancy: keep two SIMs (different networks) for shoots, travel, and important livestreams.
• Monitoring: track upload times, livestream stability, and peak-hour performance; don’t guess.
• Incident plan: have a fallback (record locally, publish later, switch locations, hotspot device).
• Billing control: document data bundles used per project; don’t mix personal and production spend.
• People skills: client comms and team coordination often matter more than your editing speed.

That last one is underrated. Peters highlights emotional intelligence as his responsibilities grew. I’ve seen the same in creator businesses: the ones that last are rarely the ones with the fanciest camera. They’re the ones with dependable process and calm communication under pressure.

People also ask: “Will calls still matter in a data-first creator economy?”

Answer first: Yes—because voice is the universal fallback, the fastest coordination tool, and a core channel for commerce.

Even if most audience interaction is on social platforms, creators still rely on voice for:

• closing deals quickly,
• resolving campaign issues while on location,
• managing vendors and logistics,
• handling customer support for products and courses.

And when data gets congested, voice often holds up better than video calls. That reliability becomes your business advantage.

What Nigeria’s creator economy should demand next

Reliable telecoms isn’t charity. It’s infrastructure that directly supports jobs and exports. As we head into 2026, the pressure will increase: more livestream commerce, more short-form video, heavier AI-generated media, and more remote work.

Creators, agencies, and digital businesses should push for three things:

1. Measurable reliability (clear service performance metrics that match how people actually use networks)
2. Smarter automation (AI-driven monitoring and faster restoration, not just louder marketing)
3. Infrastructure investment (power resilience, backhaul capacity, and local compute)

Nigeria’s digital content and creator economy is already loud. The quiet part—telecom professionals keeping the lights on—needs just as much respect, and frankly, more investment.

If AI is going to power the next phase of Nigeria’s creator economy, which part do you think matters more in practice: smarter creator tools, or stronger networks that never blink?