So many years after the landing of four active high capacity fibre-optic submarine cables in Nigeria, a deficiency in lastmile infrastructure is hindering the expected broadband penetration levels which experts say is key to the exponential scaling up of growth across sectors.
Experts say there are more than 30,000 kilometers of domestic fiber optic cables to connect those international cables to more than 50 percent of the Nigerian population. However, national fibre infrastructure to move bandwidth capacity across the length and breadth of the country is in short supply.
Stakeholders in the information communication technology (ICT) industry suggest that the Nigerian government needs to roll out more national cable infrastructure, give licenses to more infrastructure companies (InfraCos) and look towards achieving the milestones set in the National Broadband Plan in order to increase broadband and internet penetration across the country.
Development experts have said over and again, that a significant scaling up of broadband penetration would inspire the establishment of more businesses and the expansion of existing ones, leading to massive job creation, diversification and economic growth.
They further say it would enable e-governance, creating better and direct communication between government and the governed, eradicating or drastically reducing malpractices including fraud and ghost workers and the drain they bring to the economy.
It would further empower e-learning which would enable the working class to improve their skills part time, without leaving employment.
In addition, they say, it would enable the country’s diapora intelligentsia contribute to national development from their outposts , allow Nigerians the convenience of working from remote location and enable retirees such as teachers and others continue to contribute to the economy from wherever they may be.
Although Nigeria’s broadband penetration level increased from less than 10 percent in 2015 to 20.95 percent at the end of 2016, analysts say much more needs to be done for the county to achieve the set target of 30 percent penetration by 2018.
“There is very limited network of these international cables and the lack of national cable infrastructure is stalling efforts to deepen broadband penetration, as there is very little or no transport to the hinterland,” Lanre Ajayi, past President of Association of Telecommunications Companies of Nigeria (ATCON), told BusinessDay in a telephone interview.
According to Olusola Teniola, current President of Atcon, “the government needs to expedite the award of the remaining infraco licenses and provide assistance and incentives to the industry players to encourage further roll out of broadband infrastructure into the various municipalities and communities across Nigeria.”
Teniola told BusinessDay that “this will in the long term, lead to more jobs being created on the back of increased broadband penetration.”
In 2014, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) confirmed two winning bidders for InfraCo licenses out of seven regionally based infrastructure companies, however, the remaining five zones are yet to be licensed.
Umar Danbatta, Executive Vice Chairman (EVC) of the NCC said at an international press briefing in Lagos recently, that; “not much is going on by way of deployment of these infrastructures in the two licensed zones and the remaining five zones; South-West, South- East and South- South in the southern part of the country, as well as North-West and North-East have not been licensed so far.”
However, Danbatta said that the commission had plans to issue the remaining five licenses very soon.
“Let me say, we have already set in motion processes for the licensing of the five remaining zones and very soon, this process is going to be completed and InfraCos will emerge,” he said.
BusinessDay also gathered that the active submarine cables carrying an installed capacity of over 19.2 terabytes, about 340 gigabytes combined, which is sufficient capacity available to drive bandwidth dependent services are not being well utilised to deepen broadband penetration in Nigeria.
Nigeria currently has the SAT-3 cable that links countries along the west coast of Africa to one another and on to Europe and Asia, Glo-1 cable, which links countries along the west coast of Africa to each other and on to the United Kingdom, MainOne links to the west coast of Africa and on to Portugal and MTN’s West African Cable System (WACS).
Industry experts have revealed that almost 80 percent of the capacities on these infrastructures are left redundant, due to lack of distribution and lastmile connections needed to move available bandwidth capacity to the hinterland.
“With four active cables, Nigeria definitely has sufficient international cable capacity. However, just a fraction of this is being used. I can tell you that less that 25 percent of the available capacity is currently being used,” Lanre Ajayi said.
He added that increased popularity and use of smartphones in Nigeria has created a high demand for internet connectivity as the use of mobile broadband data through smartphones currently stands at almost a 100 percent rate.
“We are said to be at about 20 percent broadband penetration when telephone penetration is already more than 100 percent, so you can see the wide gap between the broadband and telephone penetration. We need to step up efforts to bridge this wide gap, and to do this, all the milestones set in the National Broadband Plan (NBP) have to be met,” Ajayi said.
In the same vein, Olusola Teniola said; “utilisation is below 25 percent across all the undersea cables currently actively connected into Lagos from London. Most of the traffic is download web-form type traffic coming into Nigeria with very little upload traffic egressing from Nigeria to London.
“So the utilisation is somewhat skewed in favour of OTT players based in the UK or USA. So the cable infrastructure in total, represents approximately 10Tbps of bandwidth capacity. However, with the roll-out of high speed cellular networks, WiFi and broadband networks within Nigeria, utilisation should increase as Internet of Things (IoT) becomes a reality.”
Some analysts are of the view that Nigerians continue to see broadband as some type of fancy word rather than an essential amenity that should be accessible to every citizen.
JUMOKE AKIYODE
