The truth is that many of the licensed Infrastructure Companies (Infracos) in the seven zones of the country are yet to hit the ground running in the delivery of broadband infrastructures due to issues bordering on Right of Way (RoW), forex hurdles and vandalization in rolling out Optic Fibre Cables (OFCs).
Though recently, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo revealed that Council of States has reached understanding with state governments for seamless access of ways to Infracos, majority of the Infracos say there seems to be no headway yet as states had remained adamant in giving the needed easy access for broadband rollout.
NCC has three more InfraCo licenses to issue for the North West, South West and South South. The Commission had issued licenses to MainOne for Lagos; IHS for North Central and Abuja; Zinox Technology Limited for South East and Brinks Integrated Solutions Limited for North East.
Checks by Business Hilights Intelligence Unit (BHIU) in several states of the federation revealed that the 774 Local Government Areas (LGAs) in Nigeria’s 36 states are yet to be mapped out for Point of Access (PoA) to aid broadband deployment in the country due to the same issues hobbling the Infracos.
Industry analysts say PoA is expected to unlock new opportunities and drive growth in the telecommunications industry and the economy as a whole. Though, this is expected to be completed within four years, the PoA will also give expanded access to rural connectivity across the regions.
Whereas Nigeria is expected to hit 30 per cent broadband penetration by year end, there seems to be no clear headway in meeting the set target by the prevailing National Broadband Plan (NBP).
Unfortunately, many of the industry stakeholders, who gathered recently in Lagos at the Nigeria ICT Impact CEO Forum, in Lagos with the theme: ‘Broadband Access: National Scorecards and Road Map to 2020’, felt disappointed as the regulator, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), failed to say anything on the challenges of Infracos in delivering the service that will shut Nigeria up in internet inclusion.
Rather, the Executive Vice Chairman, Prof. Umar Danbatta, who revealed this plan, at the event, noted that the regional license handed InfraCos on a regional basis, would help them to provide metropolitan fibre and wholesale transmission services on a non-discriminatory, open access and price regulated basis.
In an interview, a top investors in the industry who pleaded anonymity told Business Hilights correspondent that “Many of the Infracos had tried their best, but the fact remains that both the federal government and the NCC have not done what they should in order to activate rollout of infrastructure by Infracos”.
“There is no way Infracos can foot the bills which many states have put on the table upon the claims of the government in convincing the states and this is worrisome. Besides, nobody should deceive himself that Nigeria will hit 30 per cent broadband penetration by December is government and the NCC continue to play this hide-and-seek game on RoW,” the expert averred.
He added further “we the industry players are becoming tired of hearing every time from government and NCC in particular, the gains of delivering broadband infrastructure because that is why we are ready for the investment, but the climate is very hostile and government is just silent on critical issues we have severally raised”.
Danbatta, who was represented by Head of Technical Standards, Bako Wakil, said the open access model, which was adopted for the peculiar Nigerian market will be adopted and added that “initially, the Infraco would only play in layer 1B (Metro dark fibre), and layer 2 (active infrastructure layer) of the broadband ecosystem. However, the Commission in its wisdom and for the good of the market decided to allow Infraco’s play in every segment of the value chain, and use regulatory tools such as accounting separation to discourage/mitigate/punish cross subsidization.”
On the current status of broadband infrastructure in Nigeria, Danbatta said there is adequate international bandwidth from International Submarine Cable landings such as WACS, Main One, GLO-1, SAT3 and others at our shores, with over 38,000 km of inter-city fibre lay.
