Yunus Abdulhamid and Abbas Jimoh
18 September 2008
The Federal Government will soon come up with a policy that will bar GSM and internet network providers from causing damage to the physical landscape in the country through the installation of optic fibre cables on the highways.
Minister of State for Information and Communication, Alhaji Ibrahim Nakande, said instead of causing damage to the roads and other public infrastructure, the network providers would be encouraged to share available infrastructure to minimise cost of operation while reducing the cost of business transaction. The minister was speaking at the signing ceremony of a Memorandum of Understanding between the Nigerian Postal Service (NIPOST) and Galaxy Backbone Plc held in Abuja yesterday.
He said, "Very soon we are coming up with a policy that will stop the networks from unnecessarily digging our landscape across the length and breadth of this country. We are not saying that they should not lay fibres but what we are going to ask is to what extent are these fibres laid, what is the capacity utilisation of these fibres so that we can now insist and issue a direction that if you are underutilising the capacity of the backbone infrastructure that you have on ground, there must be infrastructure sharing."
The Secretary to the Government of the federation, Alhaji Mahmud Yayale Ahmed, who was represented by the Permanent Secretary in the SGF's office Alhaji Ibra-him Talba, said "Nigeria cannot afford to be left behind", in the use of information communication technology (ICT) to leverage economic and social development process.
Deputy Post Master General, Mrs Agnes Okonye, who represented the Post Master General Alhaji Ibrahim Baba, said NIPOST was committed to transforming to a one-stop shop through the application of Information Technology for financial and other business transactions.
Managing Director of Galaxy Backbone Plc, Mr Gerald Olugwe in his presentation said after the completion of the project with NIPOST, "an estimated 12 million Nigerians will have digital access because we are taking it to the community. In other countries, the post offices are used financial transactions such as stoke broking, money transfers etc and they all depend on network access."
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