Nigeria's Long Road To Broadband Development | Leadership ...

As Nigeria moves to create a broadband development policy that will lead to affordable and pervasive internet penetration, CHIMA AKWAJA takes a look at the several challenges and opportunities that broadband will create for the entire economy.

In the last 11 years, much progress was made in Nigeria in the area of voice telephony leading to over 105 million active lines, emergence of four active Global System for Mobile communications (GSM) networks, several Unified Access Service Licence (UASL) operators and Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) operators. Despite Nigeria?s success achieved with voice telephony, the country performed below expectation in the area of broadband.

Recently President Goodluck Jonathan inaugurated a Presidential Committee on Broadband Development to come up with a proactive broadband development roadmap that would see Nigeria emerge a digital economy in the next few years by developing critical infrastructures, local content capabilities and capitalise on the country?s abundant intellectual resources in the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) field.

The presidential committee has Ernest Ndukwe, former executive vice chairman of Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) and Jim Ovia, chairman of Visafone as joint co-chairmen.

Nigeria?s Poor Broadband Rating
Nigeria came behind several African nations on the broadband penetration in a survey conducted by Broadband Commission for Digital Development. Nigeria was last month ranked a distant 100 out of 172 countries on the global mobile broadband penetration list with only 2.8 per cent of its 100 households having access to active mobile broadband subscriptions.

In a special survey publication entitled ?The State of Broadband 2012: Achieving Digital Inclusion For All? written by Broadband Commission for Digital Development, Nigeria performed poorly behind Ghana who was placed at 40 with 23 per cent, Egypt at 44 with 21 per cent, South Africa at 47 with 19.8 per cent, Zimbabwe at 59 with 14.9 per cent and several other African countries.

On fixed mobile broadband penetration, Nigeria was ranked numbered 136 with 0.1 per cent of fixed (wired) broadband subscriptions per 100 inhabitants with access out of 172 countries surveyed in 2011. The report said high-speed affordable broadband connectivity to the Internet is essential to modern society, offering widely recognised economic and social benefits.

The Broadband Commission report has Singapore, South Korea, Japan, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Luxemburg, USA, United Kingdom and Qatar on the top 10 list of countries whose citizens have the most access to active mobile broadband penetration.

Singapore and South Korea, the most connected countries in the world, their households have 110.9 per cent and 105.1 per cent broadband Internet access respectively.

In another study on broadband penetration across the globe, entitled, ?Measuring State of the Internet Society? survey released by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) few days ago, Nigeria?s ICT Development Index (IDI) was placed at 122 out of 155 countries.

In the Measuring, the Information Society 2012 report identified countries which have made the most progress to ICT development, most of them located in the developing world with strong performers including Bahrain, Brazil, Ghana, Kenya, Rwanda and Saudi Arabia. It ranks the Republic of Korea as the world?s most advanced ICT economy, followed by Sweden, Denmark, Iceland and Finland.

Why We Should Get It Right
For Nigeria that boasts as the giant of Africa, coming behind the 100 mark in the ICT development index shows that a lot needs to be done by the Presidential Committee on Broadband Development, Ministry of Communications Technology, Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), broadband service providers and agencies of government involved in broadband development and provision such as Nigerian Communications Satellite Limited (Nigcomsat) and Galaxy Backbone Plc.

For years, Nigerian ICT media had set agenda for the government to come up with a clear cut roadmap for broadband development. Instead, emphasis was laid on the dividends made from voice telephony revolution while citizens were made to believe that broadband policy was underway. It was not until Minister of Communications Technology, Mrs. Omobola Johnson, formed the presidential broadband committee, that something was seen to be done to practically realise the country?s broadband ambition.

In 2010, Association of Telecommunications companies of Nigeria (ATCON) came up with a Framework for Broadband For Nigeria (BB4NG), a document which demanded that broadband internet access be made a fundamental human right and at the same time address the broadband imbalance in Nigeria. That document was later transformed into Broadband Expansion Programme (BEP), which was a precursor to NCC?s adoption of Equal Access Model to facilitate the development of broadband.

The open access model is already being implemented in countries like Singapore and Australia.

Executive vice chairman of NCC, Dr. Eugene Juwah, said ?The Open Access Model is expected to help Nigerian?s plug into the global knowledge grid and stay competitive with other countries.?

The key elements driving the objective focus on open access deployment of fibre infrastructure is to achieve high level of penetration across all geo-political zones, contribute to GDP growth and development of knowledge economy, provide competitive and affordable pricing, ensure intelligent incentives to support industry players while equipping Nigeria with? leading infrastructure in Africa.

Why Broadband Is Critical
Mobile broadband continues to be the ICT service displaying the sharpest growth rates. Over the past year, growth in mobile-broadband services continued at 40 per cent globally and 78 per cent in developing countries. There are now twice as many mobile-broadband subscriptions as fixed-broadband subscriptions worldwide.

Brahima Sanou, director of ITU?s Telecommunication Development Bureau, said, ?The surge in numbers of mobile-broadband subscriptions in developing countries has brought the Internet to a multitude of new users. But despite the downward trend, prices remain relatively high in many low-income countries. For mobile broadband to replicate the mobile-cellular miracle and bring more people from developing countries online, 3G network coverage has to be extended and prices have to go down even further.?

Currently, data traffic in West Africa is lower than voice. However, operators have reported that the demand for data services is doubling every six months. Operators expect that data will account for 60 per cent of total traffic on 2G and 2.5G networks, and approximately 90 per cent on 3G networks by the end of 2012. In addition with cables landing in most of the countries in the region, the global connectivity is in much better shape than ever before and will be the driver for data growth in the region.???

Mayank Sharma, Vice President, Africa Region, Comviva said, ?Over the last year operators in West Africa have witnessed huge demand for mobile data, especially in countries like Cote d?Ivoire, Senegal, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Ghana and Cameroon. For this they need solutions that can complement their infrastructure and help them launch innovative data services to boost revenues and also ensure efficient network management to minimise the revenue leakages and cost overheads?.?

The critical importance of broadband policy for Nigeria is that it will ensure cost reduction and transparency in governance, create ubiquitous and cost effective national ICT infrastructure, ensure a multi-faceted strategy that enables equitable access to the infrastructure and allow citizen engagement and convenient delivery of government information and services.

A very practical policy will see to strong support for the development of education, health, agriculture and financial services on the ICT infrastructure, local content and skills development to create jobs and sustain the industry as well as ensure ICT entrepreneurship, innovation and the development of a strong and vibrant ICT industry as well as drive technology adoption across the national economy in general.

Broadband Essentials
Engr. Titi Omo-Ettu, former president of ATCON said ?There are three things you need to invest. The first one is infrastructure which needs to be there. The second is content that you can sell if the infrastructure is there and the third is the advantage of ruralness, what can I get from rural areas. I?m going to make people to come and talk to anybody who want to hear and who has any of the four things: the brain, will, enthusiasm and resources.?

To do the above, Nigeria needs to facilitate build-out of a robust, ubiquitous and cost effective broadband network aimed at increasing broadband penetration within the country. This will facilitate the accelerated roll out of a broadband infrastructure that includes a connected national backbone, regional rings, metro rings and fibre to the cabinet that should increase broadband penetration from six per cent to about 20 per cent by 2015.?

?Imagine the benefits of broadband education- in the area of e - learning, health-telemedicine, patient data collection and health records access, to the business community-wider customer and supplier base for SME?s, Agriculture - create access to information on good cultivation practices for farmers as well as access to market prices, removal of intermediaries etc, said Johnson.

Currently, 45 million Nigerians or approximately 28 per cent of our population have access to the internet. We are working to ensure that Nigeria?s broadband infrastructure is delivered through a heterogeneous network of fiber optic cable, mobile broadband and satellite bandwidth. ?We are deploying these heterogeneous networks to enable us deliver on our internal and external targets and increase broadband penetration in the country,? Johnson said.

Source: http://leadership.ng/nga/articles/38062/2012/10/21/nigerias_long_road_broadband_development.html

current time a thousand words my sisters keeper kirby sarah palin cbi the shins