With feet set into another revolution on Broadband the world will be watching Nigeria to prove that the mobile feat was not a fluke. But beyond that is the critical factor of economic gains and benefits which the country cannot afford to miss; reason why some entities have remained resolute in their efforts to ensure that all Nigerians enjoy broadband service. The task is definitely not an easy one; yet they remained focused and determined as the heroic actors that they are.
On the Broadband Journey
If the prospective investors at the onset of the Nigerian telecom revolution were to look at the myriads of potential and certain challenges awaiting them, they would have channelled their funds towards other less burdensome avenues where returns are quicker.
But just like die hard optimists see the positive side of every ugly situation, they saw the prospects in the country and put their money into what becomes the most successful revolution in Africa. With that, Nigeria navigated the telecom revolution in a brazen style that left many wondering how a nation that was plunged into the abyss of poor communications network turned to Africa’s centre of telecommunications success within a little above a decade.
Today, not only is the country proud to have one of the largest tele-density ratios in the continent despite her huge population, it is one of the fastest growing telecom markets in the world.
But the telecom success also marked the beginning of another journey deeper into the use of technology for socio-economic development, which the whole wide world considers as the new frontier for growth. The quest for universal access to broadband technology is a global phenomenon that nations now prioritise in their economic plans.
The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has said that investments in broadband infrastructure and broadband-enabled applications and services facilitate long-term sustainable economic development, economic productivity and growth, and job creation, and generate significant returns. It stressed that investments in broadband are necessary if developing countries are to eradicate poverty and take part in the digital economy of the 21st century.
The World Bank also found a direct correlation between a rise in broadband penetration and increased economic growth, citing China, where a 10 per cent increase in broadband penetration boosted GDP growth by 2.5 per cent. As a matter of fact, the United Nations has declared access to Broadband as a fundamental right of every living being.
Thus, aside the economic gains, it is now incumbent on governments to ensure that their citizens enjoy this right. And interestingly, the Broadband revolution has taken its root in Nigeria, albeit slow-paced. Far beyond the capabilities of mobile, this revolution is expected to usher in a new dispensation where virtually everything can be done electronically through the internet; talk of e-Governance; e-Health; e-Banking; e-Education; telemedicine e-Security and the likes.
As part of economic gains, it is believed that easy access to broadband will allow Nigerians employ themselves on the back of the immense opportunities the Internet is capable of offering. Availability of robust Internet service, according to analysts, is also expected to allow skilled diaspora Nigerians contribute to national development. Besides, they have also posited that broadband will lower the cost of real estate as people will be able to work from anywhere, without necessarily converging in urban areas and needing to commute.
Ideally, the Broadband revolution which kicked off in Nigeria about five years ago with the arrival of fibre optic cables with huge bandwidth capacity ought to have yielded positive results in broadband access for many Nigerians. Unfortunately, the country’s broadband penetration is still put at less than 10 per cent.
Perhaps the most unfortunate part of the situation is the fact that the country has huge bandwidth capacity and has left it unused or underutilised for the past five years, yet continues to clamour for broadband. On different occasions, investors in these cable systems lying fallow on the shore of country had lamented and cried out to government to do the necessary to take this capacity to the hinterland. Specifically, the Managing director of Main One, Mrs Funke, has been vociferous about this, and this came with her recent revelation that only less than 10 per cent of the total broadband capacities from the all the cable operators present in Nigeria was being utilised.
Last Mile Challenge
One major obstacle to broadband spread in Nigeria has been the inability of of various operators with bandwidth capacity to take such to areas beyond the landing shores. Absence of a national backbone infrastructure has made this practically impossible, yet, with extra efforts, the operators are making some headway trying to lay some cables to extend their services. Unfortunately, another obstacle stands on their way, which is the issue of Right of Way that has become the major headache of any operator willing to lay cable in the country.
With this prevailing circumstance, even in the few cities where broadband access is available, the cost is still on the high side as each cable company is building its own broadband infrastructure and fixing prices at will, which in most cases are very high because the operators have to add the cost of building their own infrastructure backbone.
This is why the CEO of Main One Cable, Funke Opeke has insistently called for the formulation of infrastructure framework policy in Nigeria where government would consider existing backbone infrastructure and make the available capacities accessible to operators at reduced cost.
According to Opeke, the lack of a national backbone infrastructure on an open-access basis is also making it expensive to move capacity within Nigeria. As a result, she says, connecting people from the company’s landing point in Nigeria to London costs less than connecting people across Lagos. “You have to buy that infrastructure from people who own it for their own proprietary use, so it’s a cartel-like situation,” she said.
“Government should step in, look at existing infrastructure and set a regulatory policy that will enable people buy bandwidth at a government determined price, instead of each operator building its own backbone and putting its own price,” Opeke said. She insisted that so much could be done with various broadband applications if Nigeria has better Internet penetration. “Students in tertiary institutions need the access for research, and government needs the access to become e- compliant, and Main One is doing its best to increase Internet penetration in the country”, she said.
Lamenting over the last mile connectivity challenge, a top official of MTN Nigeria, Mr. Wale Goodluck, had said, “We need to take it up country. The federal, state and local government needs to support the industry with Rights of Way (RoW) and give us conducive environment to enable us put infrastructure in the ground.” MTN is the single biggest investor in WACS with over $90 million in the cable. In addition, MTN Nigeria is spending $1.3 billion into its core, radio and the transmission networks and build more national and metropolitan fibre rings.
In the same vein, Chief Executive Officer of WaveTek, a technology solution provider, Mr. Ken Spann, while reacting to the low broadband penetration in the country in spite of the huge broadband capacity at the shores of the country, said: “The issue is not with low broadband capacity, because Nigeria has a lot of capacity from MainOne, Glo1, Sat 3, MTN WACS and others. Capacities that are lying on the shores of the country are goldmine for Nigeria, but they are not being utilised because of the absence of a national backbone infrastructure that will transport the capacities to the hinterlands.”
“All we are saying is that these capacities must find their ways to the hinterland where they are needed,” He however suggested that the best, cost effective and faster ways to move the capacities from the shores to the hinterlands, would be through microwave radio, a wireless connectivity system, which is an alternative to fibre laying across country. “Deploying fibre cable is good, but it is expensive and difficult to lay it underground, because of environmental challenges. This is the reason we are saying microwave radio that is built over fibre cables is cheaper and faster to deploy,” Spann said.
For the President of the Association of Telecommunications Companies of Nigeria (ATCON), Eng. Lanre Ajayi, broadband and the huge capacity at the country’s disposal would remain useless until the issue of last mile connectivity is addressed. With connectivity in few cities of the country, Ajayi said, “the question to ask then is what about the people in the rural areas, are they not Nigerians? And how you will know that we are doing pretty well in the area of internet connection is when you compare the number of people who have access to internet to the number of people who have access to telephone services. We should not forget that the internet enables us to do more things than the telephone. Don’t forget that you can make phone calls on the internet, Voice over IP. How come that these people making calls on phones cannot have access to the internet. How can broadband accessibility be fast tracked in this circumstance?”
According to him, there are three segments to internet delivery: The international link, national backbone and the last mile. “On the international link, we seem to be making some progress with the landing of Main One, the Glo 1 and WACs. We now have four cables including the Sat 3 cables. Some others are still coming even as people have started foreseeing the possibility of glut. The next one is the national backbone. That is the fibre cable that will link all the major cities together. Some progress has been made but they are not good enough. I think that is where a whole lot of job is required to be done now.”
National Broadband Plan
With its unveiling late 2012, the National Broadband Plan 2013-2018 details a five-year plan with a target of achieving five-fold penetration by the year 2018. This is expected to address some of the challenges facing operators in taking broadband service to the hinterlands; however, the slow pace of implementation is already giving stakeholders serious concern while many are already doubting the feasibility of the 30 per cent penetration being targeted by 2018.
During the five years Broadband implementation plan, the country sets to achieve the following amongst others: License seven Infrastructure Companies (InfraCos) to rollout metropolitan fibre across the country; auction available slots in the 2.3GHz, 2.6GHz and 700MHz band for wireless broadband access; implement cost based pricing model and price caps for leased transmission capacity to drive affordability; implement cost based pricing model and price caps for leased transmission capacity to drive affordability; implement open non-discriminatory access to broadband infrastructure for all service providers; open new high capacity spectrum bands for licensing (70/80GHz); interconnect all Internet Exchange Points in Nigeria with fibre optic cable transmission; provide incentives to drive the rollout of broadband infrastructure; and increase wireless broadband access across the country.
With these targets, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), which is the industry regulator, could be seen to be at the fore front of the quest in the country, mapping out strategies with regular consultations with all industry stakeholders on how broadband could be delivered to all Nigerians. The Commission has also registered the country at the hearts of international investors as a country seriously yearning for investments through its campaigns at international forums.
Speaking on the Commission’s efforts towards implementing the Broadband Plans and the regulator’s adoption of Open Access Model of infrastructure sharing, the immediate past chief executive of the NCC, Dr. Eugene Juwah had noted that the key elements driving the focus on open access deployment of fibre infrastructure, according to is to achieve high level of penetration across all geo-political zones, contribute to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth and development of knowledge economy, provide competitive and affordable pricing, ensure intelligent incentives to support industry players while equipping Nigeria with leading infrastructure in Africa. The ultimate imperatives for this objective, he said, “is to realise affordable prizing, high speed connectivity, high level of coverage and targeted government support.
Part of the regulator’s strategies is to license seven infrastructure companies who will build broadband infrastructures across the country and make it available on open access basis. However, out of the planned seven, the Commission has only licensed two: Main One Cable Company to provide the required infrastructure services in Lagos State, and IHS Nigeria Limited which will be responsible for providing the services in the north-central zone of Nigeria (which includes the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja).
The brave Actors
Obviously, the operating environment in the Nigerian ICT industry (as it is for other industries) is quite tough, a major reason why many operators who started the broadband revolution in Nigeria few years ago, especially, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are no longer in operation today. But that has not stopped others from carrying on even in the face of the challenges. Believing in the saying that when the going gets tough, the tough get going, they have kept the flag of the broadband revolution flying in Nigeria and they remain the source of hope that sooner or later, broadband service will become as ubiquitous as mobile telephone service in Nigeria.
By sheer size of their company or the year of establishment, they may neither be the biggest nor the oldest, but their investments, their commitments towards the broadband project in Nigeria stand them out as truly the actors, whose heroic postures should be celebrated now and even after Nigeria has recorded success with broadband.