| Wireless is Nigeria’s option to broadband |
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 The Chief Executive Officer of the Nigerian Communications Commission, Engr. Ernest Ndukwe has said Nigeria’s option to realize ubiquitous broadband penetration across the country within a reasonable period of time can only be predicated on the deployment of broadband services over wireless infrastructure.
Engr. Ndukwe who spoke at the CEO Agenda Summit organized by the Economist Magazine, said that Nigeria does not have the luxury that other countries had in huge investments in fixed line infrastructure, but not withstanding, the nation cannot afford to move in a different direction from where the world is going.
He told the participants that NCC’s conscious efforts towards promoting broadband infrastructure in Nigeria began in 2007 when the Commission declared 2008 as the year of broadband, which is the reason for the introduction of the State Accelerated Broadband Initiative, SABI, designed to take broadband infrastructure to all the state capitals and major urban centres across the 36 states of the Federation.
“In Nigeria, we believe it has to be over wireless. Doing it over the wire may not be possible if we must meet the world at the critical point of deployment of this important infrastructure of development”, he said.
He said with the current pace of deployment of latest in telecom infrastructure in Nigeria, Nigeria may be one of the first adopters of the Long-Term Evolution, LTE, technology because of the potentials of the mobile broadband services which is already being deployed today.
Engr. Ndukwe reiterated that broadband is already available in Nigeria in some cities while the Commission is using initiatives such as the Digital Appreciation Project, DAP, and Community Communication Centres, CCC, to provide broadband services to a larger group of people
He said it is heart-warming that few years ago, Nigeria is worried about lack of optics fibre infrastructure but today, we have plenty of this on ground which provides the nation with the basic foundation for broadband.
He said the fact that Nigeria has some international credit card companies like Visa, MasterCard, and a host of others is because they found the environment attractive and conducive because of available infrastructure.
Engr. Ndukwe advised those who are advocating for operating companies to concentrate services in few urban centres so as to achieve 100 per cent quality of service while the rural areas will be denied of services to forget the idea.
“We want the 64 Million subscribers on the network to enjoy 80% quality of service rather than get only 20 Million of them in urban centres enjoying 100 per cent of that quality.
“Those who said they cannot live with a situation where all Nigerians have access to phones and wants us to restrict services so that they get 100% quality should drop their phones so that we give it many more Nigerians who want services and wait till we attain 100%”, he said.
He dismissed insinuations that many Nigerians carry multiple phones because of the current quality of services, and insisted that many were carrying such phones even when the quality of services was no issue and that one phone can serve anybody who really wants to use it. According to him, people carry these phones for many other reasons including the fact that some may want to enjoy some tariffs offered in the different networks.
He discountenanced comparisms with other developed parts of the world reminding his listeners that in Nigeria, as different from those countries, rely only on mobile phone for everything including home, office and mobility while in those other countries, there are fixed line at home and office while mobile phones are use sparingly. “In the case of Nigeria, it is 90 % mobile which also put a lot of pressure on the network infrastructure.
Engr. Ndukwe also reminded those comparing Nigeria with countries like UK to note that UK has more than 40,000 base stations against Nigeria’s less than 15,000 base stations.
“This tells you that there are still a lot of black spots within the Nigerian network that will need to be covered with base station infrastructure. “Please note that base station is not such that you say, let there be base station, and there will be base station. It costs money and time and we have to learn to be a bit patient because we have a huge geographical land mass to cover”, he said.
He said however that nobody should loose money on account of drop calls or the billing systems of the service providers. He said the Commission will sanction any operator for billing a subscriber for services which he did not use.
“The Commission will sanction any operator who bills a subscriber for a call beyond the one that the subscriber made”, he said.
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