Okoh Aihe
27 August 2008
The Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC, has said broadband services are within the doorsteps of the country as some operators have begun offering these services on wireless platforms ahead of a State Accelerated Broadband Initiative, SABI, designed by the Commission to take broadband infrastructure to all the 36 state capitals of the country as well as urban and semi urban centres.
Executive Vice Chairman of the Commission, Dr. Ernest Ndukwe who made this declaration in Lagos at the AFRITEC Forum organized by ITWorld Magazine to discuss the future of broadband infrastructure in Nigeria, also disclosed that the Commission had freely offered ICT appreciation training to more than 4,000 professors and lecturers from tertiary institutions across the country through the Digital Bridge Institute, DBI, an ICT training institute established by Commission.
He said the training was offered to the lecturers under the Digital Appreciation Programme for Tertiary, (ADAPT) designed to equip the lecturers with the basic knowledge of computer skills and Internet application knowledge to ensure they are equipped to use these facilities to teach and encourage their students to use them whenever possible.
He said the subject of broadband being discussed at the conference is timely and crucial to the Commission, even as the nation celebrates the 7th year anniversary of an eventful seven years of massive growth in the voice telephony, as broadband is the next frontier that needs to be conquered. He noted that some operators are already on that platform.
"Some of the mobile operators have begun offering services on the 3G platform and subscribers are now able to transmit data across huge wireless bandwidths. Some of the companies have rolled out WiMAX services which are providing broadband services across major cities like Abuja, Lagos and Port Harcourt.
"We believe that with the current penetration of phone services across the country, broadband services would be a major catalyst for pervasive application of e-education, e-health, e-commerce, e-government, e-business, and all those e-applications that are available in most developed countries of the world.
"This also means that if broadband infrastructures are made available to users, there will be cost effective use of Internet services as users would spend less time doing their businesses on the net", he said.
Dr. Ndukwe said it is because of the importance placed on extending broadband services to all parts of the country that the Commission initiated the State Accelerated Broadband Initiative, SABI, which from implementation would cover all the 36 state capitals across Nigeria, and many of the urban and semi urban centres.
"The rationale behind the SABI project is to provide wireless broadband services in Nigerian cities so as to stimulate demand for Internet services and increase usage, and most importantly, this project is to drive broadband to home at affordable levels", he said.
He said that the Wire Nigeria, (WIN) project being facilitated by the Commission to ensure provision of optic fibre cable backbone infrastructure across the country, would also compliment the SABI.
"The idea behind the WIN project is to provide a national backbone infrastructure which will allow multiple operators to hook on at any point to deliver quality broadband transmission services across the country," he said.
Dr. Ndukwe noted that the WIN project is in line with the National Telecom Policy which required that the nation has a robust backbone infrastructure upon which other services would continue to run.
The model of implementation of the WIN project is to achieve Internet access within 50km of every location in Nigeria but the ultimate goal is to achieve Internet access within 5k radius from every point in Nigeria.
DBI, established by the Commission as a finishing school for ICT education to address the expanding manpower needs of the ICT sector, offers degrees and diploma programme in collaboration with foreign and local universities. The campuses of the Abuja-based institute are being established in Lagos and Kano.
The Commission, he said, has also provided Internet access to more than 150 secondary and higher institutions across the country in another initiative called Digital Appreciation Programme, DAP aimed at equipping these schools with wireless Internet access and fully equipped computer centres where students of these institutions, and surrounding communities would have access to the Internet.
In addition, he said the Universal Service Provision Fund, USPF, established to drive the penetration of telecommunications services to the unserved and underserved locations of the country is also providing similar ICT centres to bolster knowledge and skills among the potential users of broadband services.
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