The Nigerian Communications Commission on Monday revealed that its agency has awarded two licences for Lagos and one for the North Central, including Abuja, for the provision of metropolitan fibre network.
It was also discovered during the budget defence of the Commission that the capital budget expenditure proposal for the NCC in 2015 is about 30 per cent increase over that of 2014.
The NCC’s Executive Vice Chairman, Dr. Eugene Juwah, while defending the 2015 Budget before the Senate Committee on Communications, said the Commission is coming up with a bill on telecoms critical infrastructure that will enhance quality service delivery in the communication sector in Nigeria.
According to Juwah, while the capital budget expenditure profile of the agency for 2014 was N15 billion, its 2015 capital budget proposal is N21.1 billion.
He said the estimated budget expenditure for special projects by the communications agency for 2015 is N2.1 billion as opposed to N3.4 billion expended in 2014.
He disclosed that a very key capital project the agency would be embarking upon this year is the broadband projects, which has made the agency to award licences for Lagos and Abuja for provision of metropolitan fibre network.
Juwah said: “Our broadband initiative has started.
“We have actually awarded two licences, one for Lagos and one for North Central, including Abuja.
“These are licenses for the provision of metropolitan fibre network.
“The problem of the allocation is that we normally do not get our budget passed on time, so we have accrued money since this project started from the last budgets we have, so we have looked at our budget requirement and as the project is ongoing, we feel that we have enough funds to cover the project.
“This project has started for quite some time now and it has been running.
“The other major focus that we have for 2015 is the issue of quality of service.
“Quality of service is made up mainly of two parts.
“One is an issue that can be controlled by the operators.
“That is the capacity issue and we have been monitoring their parameters and analysing them or advising them accordingly.
“The other part is outside our purview and to tackle this issue, we have, in conjunction with the National Assembly, a bill on Telecom Critical Infrastructure, which we hope that will be presented to the National Assembly and be given accelerated hearing and we hope that most likely it will be in the interest of telecom members and this committee in particular, if this bill is passed during this parliamentary session.
“This bill will deal with vandalism of Telecommunication infrastructure and fibre cuts due to road networks, shutting off of services by state governments, planning permit restrictions, right of ways restrictions and we hope that if this bill is passed as federal legislation that all these problems will be reduced and there will be a remarkable improvement in the quality of service.”
The Chairman of the Senate Committee on Communications, Gilbert Nnaji (PDP-Enugu East), in his remarks before the committee went into closed door session with the NCC officials, said the decline in the agency’s budget for special projects would be critically looked into just as he lamented over snail progress the country is making on access to broadband services.
Nnaji said: “The fact that our nation has little access to broadband services, even with the number of undersea cables running across the country, is worrisome
“It is lamentable to note that Nigeria finished 2014 with 8 per cent penetration after stagnating at 6 per cent between 2011 and 2013.”