At a news
conference, the Executive Vice President of the Nigerian Communications
Commission (NCC), Dr. Eugene Juwah, and the secretary general of the
Commonwealth Telecommunications Organization (CTO), Prof Tim Unwin revealed the
plans of NCC to license broadband services for regions and the accompanying
advantage.
Dr. Juwah
revealed that the country will be divided into regions and interested operators
will have to bid for the regions. It is expected that the bid will be made next
year by the prospective operators.
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| Img: Techloy |
He also
revealed that it will be a collaboration between the private sector and the
government to encourage the reluctant private operators.
“You can only
do mobile broadband up to a point without having fixed broadband. We have come
to that point in Nigeria today. You need to backhaul your data. The problem we
have in Nigeria is that we have a preponderance of microwave backhaul in our
system and this has created a huge percentage of quality of service issues.”
Juwah said.
Prof Unwin
explained that despite the benefit of the proposed fixed broadband service,
taking action to make it a reality is much more important than talk of mouth.
“The benefit
of broadband is best appreciated when it is made available to where it can be
used to develop sectors like health, education and others. But this cannot be
achieved without collaborations. I think Nigeria’s broadband development needs
multi-sectoral collaborations. Your broadband plan should be such that other
countries could copy from, if you get it right. We have to move from rhetoric
to action. It is easy to write action plans but getting practical action into
the plan is where the job really is.” Unwin stressed.
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NCC plans to provide license for fixed broadband services