Chief Executive Officer for Linkserve, Chima Onyekwere, one of the pioneers of ISPs in Nigeria, gave the warning shortly after the commissioning of IXPN by the Nigerian Communication Commission (NCC).
Nigerians had held high hopes that the commissioning of the exchange would translate to an instant reduction in the cost of bandwidth.
Onyekwere admitted that given the the recent launch of submarine cables and the new Exchange Point, Nigeria ought to have started experiencing a downward trend in the pricing of bandwidth.
He however insisted that the anticipated price reduction was not going to be immediate.
He said most ISPs already have three to five year satellite contracts with international bandwidth operators and that funds
have been committed to such contracts.
“It becomes difficult to automatically stop ongoing contracts in order to take advantage of the recently deployed fibre optic cables from Glo 1 and Main One because these contracts must continue to run until they expire,” said Onyekwere.
SIMEON OGOEGBULEM in Abuja, Nigeria
