Executive Vice Chairman and Chief Executive of the Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC Ernest Ndukwe, at the weekend listed the prerequisites for sustaining the successes recorded in the sector in the last ten years.

Ndukwe, who spoke as guest speaker at the maiden edition of "Breakfast With " , hosted by the alumni association of the School of Media and Communications at the Pan African University in Lagos, said such factors include a regulatory regime that is independent, transparent, and predictable; an updated national telecom policy and laws, a conducive operational environment; an efficient frequency spectrum management and allocation; improved power supply; expansion of the broadband infrastructure, capacity building of indigenous manpower, stable financial stability, among others.

At the breakfast meeting which held at the Ahmed Onibudo campus of the university and chaired by the Vice Chancellor, Professor Juan Elegido, the NCC boss noted that the successes recorded by the Commission in the past ten years is attributed to the successful sector reform, made possible by conducive environment with respect to policies and the regulatory regime.

"I think to sustain the growth, we must lay emphasis to a few things and I will start by advocating that we must maintain stability in the policy and regulatory environment", he said. He said these two factors are critical for any investor to make an investment decision.

Ndukwe whose audience included Vincent Maduka, former Director General of NTA, the Dean of the School of Communications, Professor Emevwo Biakolo, former Director General of FRCN, Mr. Ben Egbuna, President of SMCA, Mr. Olukayode Olubunmi, said the current telecom policy in Nigeria needs to be updated, while the forward-looking 2003 Act needs to be revisited to accommodate one or two emergent issues in the sector.

The NCC boss said with hindsight of experience, it is critical that the financial and operational independence of the regulator is maintained. "Why we moved as fast as we did over this period is as a result of fair amount of regulatory independence that the organization had", he said. He said this independence is not just independence from the political hierarchy but also from the operating companies, which he said, makes financial independence very critical too.

He said it is not wrong for investors to make profit as it was government's decision to invite the investors and without returns on such investments, perhaps, Nigeria's paltry 400,000 lines in 2001 would not have grown to the more than 70 million active subscriber lines today. " Our focus should not only be that money is being made in the industry but that this decision of government has suddenly changed the landscape and provided phones in the hands of most Nigerians, and provided telephone "access" because even if you do not own a phone, you will likely find a place to make calls near your location today", he said.

Ndukwe said apart from efficient management of the frequency spectrum, the regulator must always ensure that frequencies are earmarked for new services are reserved in order to enable the country to be on same page with the rest of the world. He said this is the reason why Nigeria is quite active at the International Telecommunications Union, ITU, at the moment.

"I think also going forward, we must emphasise on growing broadband infrastructure, and not just growing it for the sake of it but catalyzing its adoption and usage, nationwide", he said. He hoped that the ongoing optics fibre infrastructure deployment going on in the country would accelerate broadband Internet adoption and usage.

While relating this to his pet concept, Fibre Without Borders", Ndukwe said "even within the African continent, we should encourage building of optic fibre that links the countries of Africa because that will help us do local peering of Internet, keep local networks linked to each other, reduce price of communicating within the countries in Africa and perhaps greatly increase broadband speed".

He also noted that the much the nation is able to develop the manpower resources available for the industry will determine how the industry performs in the next ten years and beyond. He cited some countries like India that export such resources to other parts of the world. Ndukwe said the Digital Bridge Institute, which was NCC's contribution to this capacity budging requirement is currently waiting the approval of its application to the National University Commission, NUC, for approval as a university

He said some areas that are external to the telecom industry but very critical for its success are the power sector and banking and finance sectors of the economy. He advocated for an idea regional management where each state of the federation will have the responsibility to generate and provide power to the state. He wondered why many countries that are less in geographical spread and population than any given state in Nigeria were able to enthrone uninterruptible power supply over the years.