Funke Opeke, the Chief Executive Officer of MainOne, a technology organisation, said on Monday that the nation could achieve 25 megabytes per second of broadband service in urban areas.
She also said there was the possibility of up to 10 megabytes per second in rural areas, while the underserved could be served by 2025.
Opeke, in an Interview with News Agency of Nigeria in Lagos, said it could even be better if the plan got accelerated by 2023.
NAN reports that the Federal Government had set up a committee of technology experts to address the issue of broadband plan in the country, with Opeke as chairman.
She said the expectation of government from the committee was to achieve 70 per cent internet penetration by 2025.
According to her, government has put a very broad and capable committee together and believes that those goals can be achieved, perhaps accelerated, whereby Nigerians have access up to 70 per cent penetration.
Opeke said the population online today was thought to be about 50 million Nigerians and expected in the next five years that about 100 million would come online.
She said: “With access to smart phones and connectivity, we would be transforming how we live, work, businesses would be much better and there would be availability of businesses online.”
Opeke, also speaking about the impact of Information and Communications Technology and launch of stack local in Nigeria, said it was one of the major contributors to the nation’s Gross Domestic Product.
She said: “When you talk about impact to the economy, already ICT is one of the largest contributing sectors to the country’s GDP based on the result shown by the National Bureau of Statistics.
”So, ICT’s contribution continues to grow.
“So what stack does and the launch of our stack local in Nigeria is bringing services that people had to go offshore to obtain previously by making them available in Nigeria.
“What stack does is: service is available locally, it boosts local economy by creating jobs in Nigeria, boosting economy and making services available and boosting the performance.
“Our digital services can do better because it will retain some of the values here in Nigeria.”
NAN reports that the Azure stack cloud was launched at the annual edition of NERDS Unite, a summit of technology experts, in Lagos, organised by MainOne.
Opeke said in NERDS Unite, the impact had been to propagate new technology and ways of doing business in the Nigeria business community at large, both private and public sectors.
Opeke said as pioneers in technology, MainOne was future-proofing the environment for customers so that they could benefit from what technology was offering.
She said businesses were moving into data centres and “now we are beginning to see businesses migrate in the cloud.”
NAN.
25 megabytes per sec connectivity in urban areas possible by 2025 — Opeke
