Nigeria intensifies focus on broadband connectivity
Nigeria’s Communications Commission (NCC), Earnest Ndukwe, has called for focus on broadband internet connectivity by emerging markets as a means of forging ahead in global competitiveness.
“Most emerging markets will continue to lag behind in the global competitiveness unless broadband internet connectivity is given a priority attention in the scheme of things including ICT equipment and infrastructure”, Ndukwe told reporters in Lagos.
The NCC boss added that emerging markets including Nigeria could make use of the broadband initiative to fast-track developments in various sectors of her economy and consequently become global players in their quest for making giant economic strides in 2020.
Ndukwe said the idea also formed part of a paper presented by his commission to a capacity building conference on ICT Investments in emerging economies organized by the Commonwealth Telecommunication Organizations, CTO in London recently.
He disclosed that while many questions on what type of regulation can promote investment, consistency and predictability were raised during the Panel discussion that attracted heated debate on how best to build robust ICT infrastructures in the emerging markets, his commission had averred that government has intervened to ensure lower prices and fairer access to national and international fibre infrastructure, adding that NCC has actually taken a role in getting this infrastructure built.
“Broadband infrastructure and connectivity provide an opportunity not only for economic surge, but also present long-term benefits that transverse almost every aspect of Nigeria and rest of the African sub-region. There is no better time to embrace this technology as an essential factor for the development of African societies” he said.
Reports have seen broadband Internet access as becoming an essential part of everyday life, and part of how people communicate, book their holidays, search for work, find out news, purchase goods and educate their children.
Studies have also revealed that broadband in the rest of the world will grow from 16 million to 48 million lines in the same period, so the world will add 273 million lines to reach 683 million in total.
by Ikechukwu Osodo
[...] Subscribers (NATCOMS) believes the recent interconnect rates method as agreed by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) is a rip-off strategy against telecoms subscribers in the country, writes the Lagos publication the [...]
As with most things in Nigeria, the NCC can not be seen to be helping Nigerians in any form if the rate at which calls are charged is still amongst, if not the highest in the world.
Whereas in developed nations, which we tend to want to emulate, the likes of Vodafone, T-Mobile, O2 etc can compete effectively amongst themselves (very few, as well)to keep costs of calls down for the subscribers, Nigeria Telcos will always find excuses for charging extortionate rate, yet NCC and its managers do not deem it fit to call them to order. Of what use is NCC then?
The issue of internet connection is another that is really abhorent. How can the likes of Starcomms charge N20,000 equivalent of £80.00 for a 100 hr connection to the internet? Yet, annoyingly, the chairman of NCC and his cohorts decry the slow take-off of internet communication in the African sub-region. For a whole month, people pay £15.00 for a super fast 24/7 broadband connection in the UK. What is been touted in Nigeria as broadband is nothing more than a boosted dial-up connection. It is obscenely slow. Is it not time to put knowledgable people in such position as that of the chairman of the NCC? I see him as a one-eyed king in the land of the blind.
To be acceding to the excuses given by the Nigeria Telcos shows lack of interest in the progress of the nation ICT-wise lack of knowledge of what happens internationally. If the Telcos are not milking their subscribers dry and making tonnes of money from them, they would not be in business. The time has come for the Telcos to stop bleeding Nigerians dry claiming inadequate power generation as an excuse. To be quite honest, their masts are health hazards, and the generators they constitute noise pollution and emit untold amount of carbon dioxide in to the atmosphere. In almost 10 years of their existence in Nigeria, there has not been any significant improvement in what they deliver, except for Globacom, a company that has invested in undersea fibre optic cables which we are still waiting to reap the benefits of.
[...] Nigeria intensifies focus on broadband connectivity [...]