Broadband penetration in Nigeria rose to 42.02 per cent by July 2020, the Federal Government disclosed on Monday.
Executive Vice Chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission, Prof. Umar Danbatta, who disclosed this during a virtual interactive session with media executives, noted that broadband penetration in the country was less than six per cent in 2015.
He explained that the recent improvement in broadband penetration, which has made Internet services available to more Nigerians, was as a result of key policy initiatives embarked upon by the commission.
The initiatives include increasing the number of licensed Infrastructure Companies (InfraCo) to six across the geo-political zones, spectrum refarming, spectrum re-planning, spectrum auctions, and administrative spectrum assignments.
He added that the NCC was currently in the process of finalising the InfraCos’ counterpart funding agreement to ensure the full rollout of broadband infrastructure on an Open Access Model in a bid to ensure availability of Point of Access in each of the 774 local governments in the country.
Also, he noted that the increase in broadband penetration has enabled the growth of the subscriber base which was 199,307,796 as at June 2020.
Teledensity has risen to 104.41 while the percentage contribution to GDP in the second quarter of 2020 was 14.2 per cent.
Danbatta further disclosed that the NCC is working with the Nigeria Industrial Policy and Competiveness Advisory Council (Critical Infrastructure Sub Committee), under the auspices of Vice President Yemi Osibanjo, on various initiatives towards improving broadband penetration.
According to him, to underscore the importance of the sector to the economy, in June 2020, the Federal Government designated telecoms facilities as Critical National Infrastructure and the Office of the National Security Adviser and all security agencies have since been notified of the development.
Danbatta, in the same vein, disclosed that the NCC had activated 19 Emergency Communications Centres (ECCs) across the country.
He said the 112 toll-free National Emergency Number through which members of the public can call the ECCs allows Nigerians in distress to get help in emergencies.
Danbatta noted that more than 1,209 COVID-19 related calls were made to the 112 national emergency number between March and June 2020 from the various ECCs across the country.
He added that the commission’s regulatory interventions in the area of issuance of Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) Short Code to banks and Other Financial Institutions (OFIs) have helped in deepening financial inclusion.
“To further ensure fair play between the MNOs and the banks regarding applicable charges for USSD, the commission in July 23, 2019, issued a Determination for USSD Pricing.
“The Determination defined a USSD session as 20 seconds, the price floor per USSD session is N1.63k, while the Price cap per USSD session is N4.89k,” he said.
Danbatta further disclosed that the public outcry that greeted an attempted commencement of the end-user billing by the MNOs for USSD usage necessitated a temporary suspension of the provision of the USSD determination by the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, pending when there would be proper understanding among stakeholders.
However, he pointed out that the NCC has revised the USSD determination thereby putting an end to a protracted dispute between MNOs and financial institutions on the applicable charges for USSD services and the method of billing.
The commission, according to him, also determined that MNOs must not charge the consumers directly for the use of USSD channels for financial services in the form of end-user-billing.
Rather, the transaction should be between the MNOs and the entity to which the service is provided (i.e. banks and OFIs).
Danbatta further noted that the efforts of the NCC had culminated in the listing of telecoms companies on the Nigerian Stock Exchange, a development which he said has promoted indigenous investment and ownership in the telecom sector.