With just six months remaining in 2018, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) strongly believes the country can still raise its broadband penetration to 2018 this, according to its Executive Vice Chairman, Prof. Umar Danbatta.
He argued that the penetration stood at 22% in March although it is largely through wireless broadband. To quickly raise the coverage, he said the commission is working to achieve the National Broadband Plan (NBP) target for broadband penetration.
He mentioned the commission’s recently awarded frequency spectrum (via auction) to new and existing licensees including Bitflux Communication Limited (Bitflux), MTN Communications Limited, and Intercellular Nigeria Limited.
As at April 2018, Nigerian operators have deployed about 52,000km of fiber optic cables, and there are about 33,000 2G, 29,000 3G and 4000 LTE sites deployed.
ThisDay reported the NCC boss revealed that five international submarine cable and landing station services operators have landed cables in the country.
To ensure continuous roll-out of requisite infrastructure, NCC has also issued operating licenses to 12 metropolitan fibre cable network companies and 12 national long distance operators.
NCC affirmed it had examined the open access model as the model for optic fiber transmission network deployment to bridge the current gap and deliver fast and reliable broadband services to households and businesses.
“NCC through the Universal Service Provision Fund (USPF), is implementing the following access and connectivity programmes for the under-served and un-served areas across the country which include: BTRAIN-Backbone Transmission Infrastructure of over 3,250km of fiber across six geo-political zones-Base Transceiver Stations (BTS) :155 BTS sites.
“On completion, the BTS will provide voice and data services populations in 930 communities. Other initiatives include tertiary institutions knowledge centres at 73 school locations; information resource centres at 73 library locations, e-accessibility project at 14 locations across the geo-political zones, e-health project, at 13 General Hospitals across the six geo-political zones, school knowledge centres at 1,324 schools in all the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT),” Danbatta said.
