Stanley Jegede, Chief Executive, phase 3 telecoms, West Africa’s largest independent fibre optic infrastructure and telecommunications services provider says the firm is intensifying efforts towards bridging a challenging digital divide by fostering scalable solutions that would see more businesses enjoy global standard connectivity.
Jegede observe that the country’s current economic clime is not a deterrent to increasing its contributions to rising global ICT initiatives targeted at making the internet accessible to all especially in the West African sub region.
He disclosed that internet connectivity is credited with providing far-reaching economic and social benefits as well as changing the lives of individuals with access to it – for the better.
He added that telecom providers can also start to push back at environmental and market limitations by proffering innovative, affordable and scalable solutions that allow more of the unconnected – who also live largely on the African continent – access internet connectivity.
According to him, “Africa must start to leverage the dividends of connectivity on a far higher scale than it currently does which heavily impedes earning capacity and economic growth of individuals, institutions, industries and several other businesses thus producing low level of economic contributions on the continent in comparison to other global economies.
Jegede further said that although the importance of expanding physical infrastructure to drive affordability which is the major criteria for ensuring accessibility cannot be overridden but we must look beyond this and Phase3 is working aggressively to pull the right partnerships to offer scalable enterprise and converged service solutions that will see people especially in rural communities rapidly leverage the opportunities that the internet delivers.
He reiterates that Phase3 telecoms remains focused in tackling the sub-region’s digital divide as once fully realised; the benefits will touch multiple industries – from financial services, where lower cost of transaction will increase financial inclusion, to “education” where increased access to knowledge will have a lasting impact on the quality of education our children receive as well as “health” where people can use the internet to reduce the impact the distance from home to hospital has on health and well –being as well as the opportunity to tap into the wealth of health resources online.
