By Nse Anthony-Uko,
ABUJA (Sundiata Post) – The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has said it is finalizing subsidy agreements with two infrastructure companies (INFRACOs), Infraco Nigeria Limited and I-Connect Infrastructure Services Limited for the Lagos and North Central Zones respectively to facilitate the roll-out of broadband services.
Executive Vice Chairman, NCC Prof Umar Garba Danbatta, who confirmed this on Thursday, said the remaining five zones; North-East, North-West, South-East, South-South and South-West are in the pipeline.
The Subsidy agreement is a Public-Private Partnership (PPP) scheme in the provision of price regulated broadband services in Nigeria.
Speaking in Abuja at a public lecture titled “The National Broadband Plan as a Catalyst for Social and Economic Transformation-The NCC Mandate”, organised by the Nigerian Academy of Engineering, Prof Danbatta also disclosed that the Commission has reached an advanced stage in the implementation of a Code of Corporate Governance for the industry that will serve to strengthen telecom legal entities and attract investment, adding that the NCC is currently engaging investors in different fora to attract Foreign Direct Investments (FDI).
The Commission (NCC) also it has advertised for firms to bid for licences to deploy fiber infrastructure in five zones; North East, North West, South East, South-South and South West.
He said the telecommunications sector contributed N1, 580 billion to GDP in Second Quarter of 2016 at 9.8 per cent which is the largest in the rebased period, an increase of 1% compared to the first quarter.
“The Federal Government had joined the league of ITU member states in recognizing broadband potential for contributions and improvements of socio-economic development of the nation and therefore articulated a policy document, – The Nigerian National Broadband Plan (NBP).
He said the NBP was planned to be implemented over a period of five years (2013 – 2018), targeting a five-fold increase in broadband penetration (i.e. 6 % at 2013 to 30 % at 2018) with the target areas being Policy and Regulation; Enabling Infrastructure; Costing and Pricing; Funding and Investment; Driving Demand; Building Fibre Infrastructure and Wireless Broadband infrastructure and Upgrade.
On the challenges been experienced by NBP, he said, “the gap between the National Planned and National Existing Broadband Fiber Infrastructure in Nigeria, the challenge has been identified by the NBP as critical to achieving broadband penetration target of 30% by 2018.
“Currently in Nigeria, more than 10 terabytes of telecommunications capacity exists at the landing point, but the challenge is the deployment of fiber infrastructure across the country that will effectively distribute this capacity to the distribution nodes at the metropolitan areas of all regions in the country that will supply sufficient fiber capacity to the backbone.
“In the North today we have over 40kilometers of fibres all over the country, we have indicated gaps we need to plug, we have license INFRACO Nigerian Limited and I-Connect Infrastructure Services Limited to take care of those gap, to facilitate connectivity for Lagos and North central zones.”
He added that there will be potential licenses for who will be bidding to obtain licences for deployment of infrastructure in five zones; North East, North West, South East, South-South and South West.
We have establish a committee that will supervise deployment that will flog the fibre gaps, monitoring and ensuring we do targeted deployment in places where we have gaps, the incentive we are giving in the licences of framework in respect of the gaps we have decided to be flog, we have incentive to be given on the basis of milestones.
He called on the Nigerian Academy of Engineering to lobby force to ensure members of the National Assembly agree to pass the bill that will make telecommunication infrastructure critical, like water infrastructure, electricity infrastructure, to belong with the same bracket as other infrastructure provider because we feel telecommunication infrastructure to be crucial to social and economic need of this country. So that it will be protected just like other government infrastructure.
Meanwhile, President of the Nigerian Academy of Engineering, Mrs. J Ola Maduka, said the choice of the topic is “The National Broadband Plan as a Catalyst for Social and Economic Transformation “The NCC Mandate” are consequence to the adverse commitment to positively and the social life of Nigerians, “broadband to our national economy and development cannot be overemphasized.
Before the National Broadband plan took off in 2013, it was estimated that Nigerian broadband penetration in 2012 was between, 4 per cent to 6 per cent, the question is where are we today?
“What we are discussing a priority in the 8 point agenda of the NCC, We intend to set up a high powered expert committee within our Academy to work with NCC to progress this action plan.