THE Federal Government hopes to achieve 70% broadband penetration and a per-gigabyte cost of N390 by 2025.
Prof. Isa Pantami, the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, stated this during a keynote address at the Association of Telecommunications Companies of Nigeria (ATCON) conference and expo in Abuja on Monday.
The programme was tagged “National Strategic Mobilisation for the Actualisation of National Broadband Target of 70 per cent Conference and Exhibition”.
It had the theme, “Realising the New Set Target of 70 per cent of Broadband Penetration”. Pantami, who was represented by the Director of IT Infrastructure Solution Department, National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Dr Usman Gambo Abdullahi, said broadband was the backbone of a digital economy.
He stated that the purpose of the event was to x-ray the existing level of broadband penetration and examine areas for improvement in order to not only attain but to exceed 70% broadband penetration.
“We are all aware that broadband supports the development of the digital economy and a focus on growing the national digital economy will also improve and diversify the nation’s traditional economy.
“The plan is carefully designed to deliver data download speeds across Nigeria. A minimum of 25Mbps in urban areas, and 10Mbps in rural areas.
“With effective coverage available to at least 90 per cent of the population by 2025 at a price not more than N390 per 1GB of data as well as the penetration rate of 70 per cent by 2025,” he said.
According to industry experts, a 10% rise in broadband adoption will boost an economy’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by 1.6 to 4.6 percent.
He remembered that the broadband penetration rate was 39.79 percent in July 2021.
According to the current assessment of the broadband plan’s achievements thus far, broadband penetration was 42.27 percent in the first quarter of 2022.
Multiple taxation and regulation, non-conformity with agreed-upon Right-of-Way (RoW) costs, and difficulty acquiring clearances and permits, he claimed, were some of the issues of broadband.
He claimed that onerous taxes and levies were among the industry’s major constraints, and that they had hampered much-needed investment in telecommunication infrastructure.
He explained that the consistent increase was due to unwavering efforts to address those difficulties.
He did, however, express confidence that the percentage will continue to rise and meet the government’s mid-term goal of 50% penetration by 2023.
“Our confidence in this is based on the strength of positive indices in 3G and 4G population coverage, which are presently at 83.65 per cent and 62.55 per cent respectively,” the minister said.
In his paper, Malam Kashifu Inuwa, Director General, National Information Technology Development (NITDA), emphasized NIRA free domain registration as the agency’s contribution to the desire for 70% broadband penetration.
According to Inuwa, the goal of this effort was to ensure coordination between NIRA (.ng registry), NITDA, and CAC in order to get more Nigerian businesses online by giving every new business registered with CAC a free.ng domain for the first two years.
Digital Indigenous Language Contents, he continued, was aimed at the creation of digital content in native languages for citizen empowerment through broadband, digital literacy training, and awareness.
The purpose of these activities, according to him, was to create or adopt a clear Digital Literacy standard with consistent training and certification for the life of the plan.
“Our goal is to achieve at least one million developers with skills in various aspects of app development in the next 18 months.
“Our long-term objective is to champion the recalibration of the curriculum of institutions of higher learning, which remain the largest pipeline in the production of digital talent.
“It will ensure the implementation of the Nigeria e-Government Interoperability framework (Ne-GIF).
“The Framework specifies concepts, principles, policies, recommendations, standards, and best practices for MDAs to work together towards cross-portfolio and seamless services delivery,” he said.
In his introductory remarks, ATCON President, Mr. Ikechukwu Nnamani, stated that the event would be interactive.
Nnamani stated that this will help the country go forward in a favorable direction and contribute to progress in all sectors of the economy.
“We are exploring and taking inventory of where we are in terms of the broadband target that has been set.
“We all know this is critical to the digital economy we are trying to build, which is why the broadband plan must be implemented and achieved,” he said.
The second session was on the Impact of Broadband Infrastructure on Over The Top (OTT) service providers, Fintech/e-commerce, equipment vendors, VAS providers, satellite operators, internet service providers, Manufacturers’ representatives, and Data Centre operators.
