Nigerian Telecommunications Limited (NITEL), was a monopoly telephone service provider in Nigeria until 1992 when the Nigerian government enacted the Nigerian Communications Commission act allowing new entrants into the telecommunications sector. During and after its years of monopoly, performance of the firm was sub-par, a behavior similar to other state owned enterprises such as NEPA and government owned water corporations. The firm was formed in 1985 as the welding together of two government entities, the telecoms arm of the Post and Telecommunications (P&T) department under the Ministry of Communications and the Nigerian External Communications (NET) In February 2008 a report by BBC News said that the Nigerian government assumed the transnational corporation did not improve performance of NITEL and therefore stopped privatization in favour of Transcorp. In 2015, the government eventually finalized a transaction that saw NITEL and Mtel's assets to NATCOM. The deal was valued at $252 million. Another Nigeria Telecom Company (Ntel) was launched In April which took the place of Nitel, Ntel is the newest reincarnation of the now defunct telecoms company, NITEL. The Nigerian government handed over NITEL/Mtel assets over to NATCOM (Ntel's parent company) in a deal worth $252 million last year. In November 2017, Nitel appointed Nate James as vice president of account management. History Post and Telecommunications Department (P&T) During colonial rule and until 1985, the Post and Telecommunications department provided mailing and internal telecommunication services between Nigerian cities while NET provided telecommunications services between selected Nigerian cities and foreign countries. Due to resource constraints, provision of services were planned in phases with expansion more pronounced between the 1950s and 1970s. Telegraph services began in the 1880s and was initially managed by the Public Works Department until 1907 when those services were transferred to P & T. In 1908, a manual telephone exchange with a magneto switchboard of 100 lines was introduced in Lagos and by 1920 the estimate of telephone lines in the country was 920, at 920. A year later, a multiple switchboard was introduced with a capacity for 800 lines and in 1941 a point to point connection with a teleprinter was introduced. In the 1950s, planned investments were launched that included expanding automatic telephone exchanges and trunk circuits, launching a Lagos to Port Harcourt microwave radio transmission route and introducing V.H.F. multi-channel radio transmission to more cities and towns. In 1961, they were more than 32,000 telephones line and