The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has said that infrastructure is key to achieving broadband revolution which is about to commence in Nigeria.
The Executive Vice Chairman of NCC, Prof. Umar Danbatta at the Building Industry Consulting Service International (BICSI) conference and exhibition said the revolution will make broadband market in Nigeria to explode this decade, just as the voice market did in the last decade.
The conference with the theme, ‘New Frontier: Nigerian ICT Infrastructure, Standards, Growth and Development’, was organised by BICSI Nigeria.
The EVC who was represented by the NCC, Director of Technical Standard and Network Integrity, Mr Fidelis Onah said that the backbone for the explosion of broadband was the availability of infrastructure.
According to him, the commission was already putting in place the required infrastructure, so as to accelerate broadband penetration in the country.
He said, “The solid metro and backbone ICT infrastructure required to carry and sustain the huge amount of data to be generated is already being planned to be put in place. This will yield the growth, development and increase in GDP that is necessary for Nigeria to take her place in the league of ICT savvy nations.”
Danbatta maintained that effective distribution of infrastructure to have services permeate all nooks and corners of the nation.
The EVC said that the lack of national infrastructure had compelled the service providers to choose developing their own infrastructure, or lease access from the existing last mile providers at non-economic rates.
He said with the ‘Open Access Model’, in the deployment of national fibre network, the commission was determined to address infrastructure challenges in the industry.
Mr Boye Oyerinde, BICSI Chairman, Nigeria said that issue of quality of service was a lingering issue in the ICT sector in Nigeria.
Oyerinde said that poor quality of service has to do with infrastructure challenges, which had to be addressed.
