Stakeholders in the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sector have called for a National Broadband Fibre provider to further deepen broadband penetration in the country.
The stakeholders made the call at the Broadband Summit 2017 organised by BusinessDay Media Ltd in Lagos on Friday.
The Chief Executive Officer of Spectranet, Mr David Venn said that there was the need for the National Broadband Fibre provider so that Nigerians would benefit from the broadband revolution.
Venn said that voice calls through mobile phone had changed everything but the next phase was broadband.
He said that broadband would have greater impact on the lives of Nigerians, hence the need to ensure it got to every part of the country.
According to him, the challenges hindering broadband penetration should be addressed.
“Nigeria needs a National Broadband Fibre provider. There is need for carriers to be able to get broadband to the hinterlands.
“The cost of international bandwidth has changed demand for broadband in the last two years.
“The Nigerian Communications Commission must sanitise the sector of anti-competitive issues,” he said.
The Managing Director of Vodacom Business Nigeria, Mr Lanre Kolade said that the economy was biting hard on all the operators.
Kolade said that the Tier II Telecommunications operators were struggling to survive.
He said that there was need for a level playing field as such would stop anti-competition in the sector.
According to him, the Tier I operators cannot be everywhere hence, the need for the smaller operators to go to the smaller areas and deploy business strategies that will work.
“For this to happen, anti-competition should be addressed.
“To deepen broadband penetration, there should be data centres across the country so that the rate at which our traffic goes outside Nigeria will reduce,” he said.
The Chief Transformation Officer of MTN Nigeria, Mr Bayo Adekanmbi, said that there was high demand of broadband by Nigerians; but no adequate infrastructure to deliver high speed internet to them.
Adekanmbi said that the nature of broadband was holistically different as it was more of a long term project as the issue of cost was critical.
He said that infrastructure to deliver broadband should not be taxed; to ensure delivery to last mile at an affordable cost.
The Chief Executive Officer of Ntel, Mr Kamar Abass said that to deepen broadband penetration, the industry should consider infrastructure sharing as active engagement on it was still lacking.
Abass said that there was the need for more spectrums to deliver broadband to Nigeria.
The Chief Executive Officer of MainOne, Ms Funke Opeke said that broadband was an enabler of economic growth.
Opeke however said that recession had changed the dynamics of the broadband industry.
She said that the industry depended on importation of its infrastructure and there had been the challenge of foreign exchange.
According to her, the country must pull itself out of oil dependency and broadband is the step toward economy recovery.
“There is need to know we can create more power houses like Google, Facebook, Amazon, Alibaba, among other to develop the economy,” she said. (NAN)
