Why Reliable Networks Keep Nigeria’s Creators Paid

Nigeria’s creator economy has a quiet dependency most people ignore: boring, unglamorous telecom reliability. If calls drop, mobile data stalls, or billing misfires, creators don’t just get annoyed—they lose income. A live session gets choppy. A brand call fails. A payment confirmation SMS arrives late. And suddenly “content” turns into customer support.

That’s why Ibikunle Peters’ story matters beyond telecoms. He’s spent over a decade doing what he calls “keeping the lights on”—working across Huawei, Airtel, and 9Mobile (now T2) to make sure phone calls connect, call quality holds, and charging is accurate. From a subscriber angle, a call is one tap. In reality, it’s a chain of systems that must cooperate in milliseconds.

This post is part of our “How AI Is Powering Nigeria’s Digital Content & Creator Economy” series, and I’m taking a firm stance: AI can’t scale Nigeria’s creator economy if the network layer is unstable. The foundation comes first. Then AI helps operators predict failures, reduce downtime, and keep creators online.

The creator economy runs on “network boringness”

Reliable telecom infrastructure is the invisible production crew behind Nigeria’s digital content. Creators can have talent, consistency, and great strategy—yet still get kneecapped by connectivity issues.

Think about the money flows creators depend on:

• Brand deals and approvals: voice calls, WhatsApp calls, and quick follow-ups.
• Live content: TikTok LIVE, Instagram Live, YouTube streams—sensitive to jitter and packet loss.
• Community monetisation: subscriptions, paid groups, course cohorts that need dependable access.
• Business operations: dispatch riders, customer calls, POS confirmations, and support lines.

When the network fails at scale, it’s not just a “telecom problem.” It’s a creator revenue problem and, in many cases, a small business continuity problem.

“When telecoms infrastructure works, the country works too.”

That line from Peters hits because it’s practical. A stable network keeps commerce moving, and the creator economy is commerce—just packaged as attention, influence, and digital products.

What actually happens when you place a phone call (and why creators should care)

A phone call is a value chain, not a feature. Peters’ explanation is useful because it shows how many failure points exist—each one capable of disrupting creator workflows.

Step 1: The mast (BTS) is your first handshake

Your phone connects to a Base Transceiver Station (BTS)—the mast serving your area. Peters compares it to a Wi‑Fi router: closer is usually better, farther is weaker.

For creators, this shows up as:

• crystal-clear audio on a brand call when you’re near strong coverage
• “Hello? Can you hear me?” when you’re on the edge of a cell’s range

Creators often blame apps first, but many times the underlying radio conditions are the real issue.

Step 2: The BSC coordinates the neighbourhood

Masts don’t act alone. They’re coordinated by a Base Station Controller (BSC), which helps manage resources across multiple BTS sites.

This coordination matters during high-traffic moments—concerts, markets, election periods, or December travel season—when creators are most likely to be recording, posting, or selling.

Step 3: The HLR answers “who are you?” and “who are you calling?”

Once the radio side is working, the network still must identify users and route calls correctly. That’s where the Home Location Register (HLR) comes in. Peters describes it as a database holding information such as registration details and the serving base station.

The HLR also helps determine:

• On-net calls (same operator)
• Interconnect calls (between operators)
• Number analysis (local vs international, restrictions, toll-free rules)

Why this matters to creators: many creator businesses depend on reliable inbound contact—customers calling, brands calling, communities reaching out. If routing or identification fails, you miss the call and the sale.

Step 4: Billing and compliance: where trust is won or lost

Creators don’t just want connectivity. They want predictable charges—especially for long calls, remote collaborations, and business hotlines.

Peters spent nine years at Huawei as a billing application engineer. That background speaks to a major truth in digital business: people trust networks that charge correctly. If billing is erratic, users change SIMs, reduce usage, or move critical business to OTT alternatives—sometimes with worse reliability.

And because operators must also share required information with regulators like the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), the system has to be accurate, auditable, and consistent.

“Keeping the lights on” is a career—and it’s more modern than it sounds

Telecom reliability is a discipline: incident response, automation, databases, and human coordination. Peters’ career shows the shape of the work Nigeria increasingly needs—especially as content consumption rises and networks carry more video traffic.

A detail I like from his story: he didn’t study telecoms in school. He studied chemistry, then stayed curious and built skills deliberately.

The infrastructure skill stack that still pays in 2026

From Peters’ journey, a realistic skills path into telecoms and infrastructure looks like this:

1. Networking fundamentals: how traffic moves, what latency and packet loss mean.
2. Linux: many mission-critical systems run on it.
3. SQL and databases: telecom systems are heavy on records, logs, and transactions.
4. Monitoring and incident response: detecting issues fast and restoring service.
5. People skills: coordinating across teams under pressure.

He even learned Linux by accident—buying a Linux laptop during NYSC and being forced to figure it out. That’s a good reminder: the fastest learning sometimes comes from inconvenience.

For readers in the creator economy, this is also encouraging: the digital ecosystem isn’t only about being on camera. There’s serious opportunity behind the scenes—network ops, site reliability, data centre roles, and automation.

Elections proved a point: telecoms is national infrastructure

The 2023 general elections made telecom dependency visible. Peters worked on deploying over 68,000 SIM cards to support the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS), which relied on connectivity to transmit data.

That project wasn’t “just provisioning SIMs.” It required:

• proper configuration and activation at scale
• coordination with multiple stakeholders
• troubleshooting under tight timelines
• operational trust: when it fails, it becomes a national headline

This is the same kind of pressure creators face during major moments—big launches, live events, product drops, December campaigns. The difference is scale, but the principle is identical: reliability isn’t a feature you add later. It’s the product.

Where AI fits: making networks more dependable for creators

AI in telecoms is most valuable when it reduces downtime and improves user experience—not when it becomes a buzzword. Peters hints at this when he says there’s more beyond prompting and that real value comes from automation at enterprise scale.

Here are practical, high-impact ways AI is already shaping telecom reliability (and why creators should care):

AI use case 1: Predicting outages before they hit users

Operators generate massive volumes of telemetry: alarms, logs, call detail records, radio metrics, power status, fibre cuts, and congestion data. Machine learning models can detect patterns that humans miss.

Creator impact: fewer surprise blackouts during live sessions and fewer “network just disappeared” moments mid-campaign.

AI use case 2: Smarter traffic management for video-heavy usage

The creator economy is increasingly video-first. That means more load on radio access networks, backhaul, and peering.

AI can help with:

• congestion prediction
• dynamic resource allocation
• identifying cells that need capacity upgrades

Creator impact: more stable uploads, fewer failed posts, less buffering for audiences.

AI use case 3: Faster root-cause analysis during incidents

When service degrades, speed matters. AI-assisted diagnostics can correlate alarms across layers (radio, transport, core, billing systems) and suggest likely causes.

Creator impact: shorter time-to-recovery. A two-hour outage that becomes 20 minutes changes a creator’s day.

AI use case 4: Billing anomaly detection (trust protection)

Billing errors trigger distrust fast. AI models can flag unusual charging patterns, suspicious usage spikes, or rating misconfigurations.

Creator impact: fewer disputes, fewer “my airtime vanished” complaints, and more confidence running business calls.

Practical playbook: how creators can protect income from network hiccups

You can’t fix national infrastructure from your bedroom studio, but you can reduce risk. Here’s what works in practice for Nigerian creators and digital entrepreneurs.

1) Build a two-network setup for critical work

If your income depends on going live, uploading daily, or taking business calls, one SIM is fragile.

• Keep a second SIM on a different operator
• Test both networks where you record most often
• Use the more stable line for live events and client calls

2) Treat call quality like production quality

Creators obsess over ring lights but ignore audio stability.

• For important calls: move closer to strong coverage (often outdoors or near windows)
• Avoid edge-of-coverage zones for negotiations and brand calls
• If a call drops twice, switch network or move—don’t “manage it”

3) Plan uploads like a logistics problem

Uploads fail when you treat them as instant.

• Schedule uploads earlier than deadlines
• Keep compressed versions ready for bad network periods
• During peak seasons (like December travel), assume congestion and plan buffers

4) Capture proof for disputes (billing, failed transactions)

If you run ads, sell digital products, or manage customer lines:

• keep screenshots of transaction confirmations
• track airtime/data purchases
• document recurring issues for escalation

That last part matters because telecom systems are complex. A clear report gets resolved faster than anger.

The bigger point for this series: AI needs strong pipes

Nigeria’s digital content economy is scaling—more creators, more video, more monetisation models, more always-on communities. Telecom teams like Peters’ are the reason that growth doesn’t collapse under its own weight.

As operators invest in more infrastructure—data centres, core upgrades, better backhaul—the opportunity for AI-driven operations grows with it. But the direction should stay grounded: AI should make networks boringly reliable. That’s the outcome creators actually feel.

If you’re a creator, a media entrepreneur, or a brand manager, here’s the mindset shift: don’t think of telecoms as “just network.” Think of it as the distribution layer of your business.

What would Nigeria’s creator economy look like if downtime dropped by half and upload stability improved across cities and secondary towns? And what new kinds of content businesses become possible when connectivity is dependable enough to bet your rent on it?