eWorld
Broadband Forum: From left, Engr Titi Omo-Ettu, President of ATCON; Mr
Tony Ojobo, Director of Public Affairs, NCC; Engr. Festus Daudu, Acting
Director, Spectrum, Ministry of Communications Technology, representing
Mrs Omobola Johnson at the Broadband Forum held by publishers of eWorld
magazine in Lagos.
The desire for faster deployment of broadband services to all the
nooks and crannies of the country for quality services delivery received
a big boost last week at the third annual eWorld forum held in Lagos.
The forum was organized by publishers of eWorld Magazine in
collaboration with the Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC in Lagos.
The event was a platform for stakeholders in the industry to look out
to issues of broadband deployment, especially the gray areas the
regulators need to touch in order to reach the required broadband level
in penetration, growth and access that everybody is craving for.
Also, stakeholders at the event were expected to articulate other
major challenges involved in the deployment process and also proffer
solution that would fast-track Nigeria’s journey to ubiquitous broadband
services.
Various speakers who spoke at the occasion, including operators
emphasized the need for all players in the country to drive local
content which to them is the key in creating the critical map that will
attract Nigerians to go online. For them, both access and content must
go together for the country to achieve the desired goal.
In her keynote address, Minister of Communications Technology, Mrs.
Omobola Johnson reiterated the readiness of her ministry to making
broadband services available to all Nigerians.
The minister said since Nigeria is a member of the international
telecommunication’s union, ITU and United Nations, which had in
different fora demonstrated dedicated interest in making broadband
connectivity available in at least 40 per cent of households by 2015,
there would be no basis for the country to lag behind in attaining the
same objective.
According to Johnson, broadband has become a key success factor for
national socio-economic development in the world’s economy, saying that a
causal relationship between broadband penetration and GDP growth exist,
which always results in every 10% increase in broadband penetration,
delivering 1.6% growth in GDP.
The forum entitled “Broadband Ecosystem: Issues for Regulators and
Operators” attracted a broad spectrum of industry stakeholders ranging
from policy makers to regulators, as well as service providers, academia
and consumers.
Broadband benefits
Buttressing the importance of broadband in an economy, the minister
noted that broadband has benefited the business community, SMEs,
agriculture, education, health and finance including access to a wider
customer and supplier base for SME’s, new business models that eliminate
intermediaries and access to information on good cultivation practices
for farmers.
Other areas of benefit according to her include access to market
prices, virtual learning deployed to rural and semi-urban areas, patient
data collection and health records access, disease outbreak tracking
and mobile money to name a few.
To realize the goal, she said a target of 28% of the nation’s
population is expected to have access to internet by 2015 with just 6%
broadband penetration, a goal she said was set for the lCT industry to
double through a heterogeneous network of fiber optic cable.
Issues being dealt with
She identified issues such as spectrum availability, right of way and
base station erection as major constraints militating against the
planned aggressive rollout of broadband infrastructure in Nigeria and
assured that the ministry had already commenced a move to address them.
She challenged the forum to come up with suggestions that will assist
government in additional ways, regarding policy direction and
implementation action plans for future development of broadband in
Nigeria.
In his remarks at the forum, Executive Vice-Chairman of Nigerian
Communications Commission, NCC, Engr. Eugene Juwah said he was
optimistic that the gathering would provide some useful contributions to
ongoing plans by the commission to ensure huge benefits of robust
deployment of broadband infrastructure and services across the country.
The EVC said that the Commission had demonstrated commitment to this
programme by commencing the implementation with the launch of
preliminary studies that will situate the plan.
Open access model
Though the commission is currently faced with the challenge of how to
drive competition when broadband services become pervasive, he said
that the regulatory body is focused on the ‘Open Access’ model in which
the role of the network operator is distinct from those of the service
providers.
“NCC’s broadband plan is being innovatively designed in such a way as
to bridge the yawning gap between available premium mobile type
services, and the traditionally affordable fixed line telephony. Unlike
most other parts of the world where fixed line services are commonplace,
Nigeria never had abundance of fixed line services the way it has seen
mobile telephony. Given the unique advantages of fixed line services,
our broadband services would also be adopted to provide fixed line-type
services.
“The issue of spectrum availability in broadband services is already
being addressed in the global platform. One major issue that is of
concern to the regulator is how it would affect broadband expansion in
particular, as is currently affecting the telecommunications
infrastructure generally as well as the issue of multiple regulation and
multiple taxation.
Earlier in his welcome address, the publisher of eWorld , Mr. Aaron
Ukodie said that the event was packaged to provide as platform for
stakeholders in the industry to deliberate on issues of broadband,
especially the grey areas where regulators need to address for them to
reach the required broadband level in penetration, growth and access.
Source: Vanguard News
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