BARRING any unforeseen circumstances, by December 31, Nigeria should end the year with eight per cent broadband penetration, according to The Guardian checks.
Though, the eight per cent penetration is still a far cry from expected impact, going by the level of work done and available bandwidth in the country, estimated at about 11 terabytes, this means that Nigeria still have about 92 per cent gap to be filled.
Facts have however, emerged that to bridge the broadband gap in the country, Nigeria might in the next five years require a major investment to the tune of about $10 billion for the facility to become ubiquitous and affordable.
According to investigations, Nigeria, which had six per cent broadband penetration as at 2011, had some leap, especially after the introduction of the National Broadband Plan last year, which targeted fivefold increase and 30 per cent penetration by 2018.
But, as at September 2014, telecommunications service providers in Nigeria have deployed about 106, 124km of fibre optic cables in service expansion across the country to boost both broadband and Internet connections.
Information at the disposal of The Guardian showed that the total of fibre cables deployed in 2014 is 38, 000km. In 2013 alone, the operators deployed 68, 124km, making a total of 106, 124km between 2012 and 2014.
The Minister of Communications Technology, Dr. Omobola Johnson, who also confirmed eight per cent broadband penetration last week in Abuja, had informed that as at 2011, 30,000km of long haul intercity fiber optic cabling were deployed.
The 68,124 km of fibre optic cables were rolled out by telecoms operators by the end of last year representing a 20.56 per cent increase from the 56, 505 kilometer recorded by December 2012.
Meanwhile, the need for the about $10 billion investments was however, arrived at, following a disclosure made at the just concluded International Telecommunications Union (ITU) Telecoms World 2014 in Doha, Qatar.
According to Principal Partner of KPMG, Joseph Tegbe, who spoke at ‘Nigeria Investment Meeting’ in Doha, “Nigeria has done very well in the strides to implementing NGBN, but the journey has just begun, because an estimated $2 billion (N340 billion) in funding/investment will be required yearly over the next five years to bridge the broadband infrastructure gap.”
Tegbe, whose company serves as consultants to the soon-to-be-licensed infrastructure companies (InfraCos) by the NCC, said despite some challenges, Nigeria remains one of the most attractive investment destinations globally.
Johnson had said at the forum that Nigeria’s participation at the ITU event was specifically to tell Nigerian telecoms sector stories, while also wooing foreign investors to invest in the country’s ICT sector, especially to develop its broadband market.
“Ordinarily, Nigeria looks fulfilled in terms of voice communication for which so much has been done and achieved in the last 13 years. However, much more remains to be done”, Johnson said, while she emphasised that ICT has become the next “oil and gas,” of Nigeria, that “it is a gold mine.”
The NCC Executive Vice Chairman, Dr. Eugene Juwah said Nigeria’s adoption of global best practices in regulatory activities has become an inspiration to many African countries, which have come to understudy how Nigeria is developing its ICT sector, adding that broadband offers huge returns on investment as government also moves to incentivise investment in the sector.
“In fact, those, who said ICT is the next oil and gas for countries that have opened up their frontiers are right. Government will provide incentives such as tax holidays of between five and seven years and also provide financial incentives of between 15 to 30 per cent of the operators’ capital expenditure (CAPEX).
According to the NCC, out of the 68,124-kilometer of fibre cables deployed by 2013, 48,901 kilometres was on land while 19,223 kilometres was submarine. Glo invested the most with the largest on land and submarine fibre running 18,569 kilometer and 19,200 kilometer respectively followed closely followed by MTN with submarine fibre of 18,142km.
On the other hand, Multilinks, Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) network deployed 5,789 kilometre of in-land fibre while Visafone laid 43 kilometres.
Indeed, lately MNOs have stepped up deployment of fibre infrastructure in and around Lagos, the country’s commercial nerve centre, in an attempt to meet the Quality of Service (QoS) mandates of the telecoms regulator.
This deployment was confirmed at a Telecoms Forum in Lagos recently by the General Manager, Network Operations, Globacom, Olajide Aremu when he said, “we expect to see better voice and data service delivery as telecoms operators connect more of the Base Transceiver Stations (BTS) with fibre
According to him, telecoms operators in Nigeria are engaging in a new and aggressive deployment of fibre networks into industrial areas, housing estates and business districts in many parts of Lagos, Ogun and Oyo states, in a bid to fully utilise large amounts of high-speed international bandwidth lying idle on the country’s coastline.