The Minister of Communications Technology, Mrs. Omobola Johnson, said the Federal Government will soon form a Presidential Committee to develop a broadband strategy and roadmap for Nigeria.
Speaking yesterday during the Nigeria Broadband Forum, organised by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) with the theme Demand as Catalyst for Broadband Services in Nigeria, which was attended by key stakeholders in the Information and Communications Technology sector, the minister said the presidential committee will ensure that Nigeria has ubiquitous internet capacity and a national backbone.
She added that this will provide the needed critical ICT infrastructure to carry data traffic to all parts of the country which is as important as “having power, transportation and water infrastructure in today’s globally connected and increasingly knowledge-based world.” The minister said all over the world, broadband or universal access to broadband has become a significant indicator of development and competitiveness among nations.
According to her: “The challenge for us in Nigeria is not the proverbial last mile, but the last hundreds of miles, taking that landed capacity to cities, communities, institutions and homes.” She said broadband has the potentials of enabling entire new industries and introducing significant efficiencies into education delivery, health care provision, energy management, public safety, government/citizen interaction and the overall organisation and dissemination of knowledge.
The Executive Vice Chairman, NCC, Dr. Eugene Juwah, said the commission was driving utility model, equal access model and passive infrastructure model as Open Access Model to being adopted for broadband infrastructure deployment in the country.
In his presentation, the Chief Executive Officer, Independent Networks Cooperative Association, Mr. Malcolm Corbett, said from 1990, demand for bandwidth had been growing globally with bandwidth consumption on various data-enabled running into several terabytes.
The Chief Technical Officer of MTN Nigeria, Mrs. Lynda Saint-Nwafor, said mobile broadband is the future of data communications, while asking the government to properly incentivise and consider the open access model properly before implementation. The summit, which had experts from the telecom and financial sectors from outside, had presentations focusing on strategies for boosting demand and infrastructure deployment for broadband access in Nigeria.
Source: leadership.ng
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