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Africa: 'Broadband is Positioning Nigeria as Africa's Gateway'

Experts said Nigeria is poised to be positioned as the gateway to African continent in terms of broadband development.

Nigeria will soon become the first country to be reckoned with on the African continent in terms of having a robust and pervasive broadband internet network, experts have said.

This is as the current efforts by the telecoms regulator, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), in collaboration with the Ministry of Communications Technology, to drive increased foreign direct investment (FDIs) into the broadband segment of its Information and Communication Technology industry is attracting both local and foreign investors.

Following the approval of the National Broadband Plan 2013-2018 by President Goodluck Jonathan early in 2013, the country had embarked on various projects and attended many international ICT events to woo potential investors into coming into the country to invest in its broadband market.

According to experts from KPMG, consultants to the regulator, the investment drive has become imperative as Nigeria would need about $10 billion investment in its broadband sector in the next five years with $2 billion investment yearly.

Nigeria's broadband penetration, which currently stands at about 6 per cent is to be increased five-folds to about 30 per cent in the next four years.

And some world renowned ICT experts and policy makers have recognised Nigeria's efforts towards attaining a leading position in the area of robust broadband network development. The outgoing Secretary General of ITU, Dr Hamadoun Toure, at the recently-concluded ITU Telecoms World 2014 held in Doha, Qatar, said, "I must commend the Nigeria's leadership in ICT. It is important to note that for five successive years, Nigeria led the global chart as the fastest-growing ICT sector. Indeed, it is the gateway to Africa, having become the leading investment destination for ICT, a status that will continue to drive investment into the country's broadband sector in years to come."

Also speaking, the incoming scribe of ITU, Mr Houlin Zhao, who expressed excitement about the colourful nature of the Nigeria pavilion at the global event, said that "there has been a massive growth of the ICT in Nigeria."

Zhao should understand Nigerian telecoms ecosystem better, having been the Deputy Secretary General of ITU for about 16 years, during which he had witnessed the growth trajectory in the country's ICT sector compared with other countries on the black continent.

According to him, Nigeria's adoption of Long Term Evolution/Fourth Generation (4G) is one of the fastest in the world, expressing assurance that broadband growth will experience same growth pattern and so encouraged investors to visit Nigeria to tap into its huge investment opportunities in broadband.

Also, the Executive Vice Chairman of NCC, Dr. Eugene Juwah, while reeling out statistics to explain where the country is where it is now, said that Nigeria currently has over 134.5 million subscribers, 96 per cent teledensity and over 74 million internet subscribers connected via narrow bands, and over $32 billion ICT investment, saying that growth in the sector today continues to be impressive.

Juwah, however, said that despite these, opportunity for growth is still high, hence, the adoption of the Open Access Model for the regime of soon-to-be-licensed Infrastructure Companies (InfraCos) to promote healthy competition, affordability and access to all in the seven zones for which the InfraCos will deploy services.



Source: http://allafrica.com/stories/201412221221.html

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