Though the latest statistics from the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC)’s official website put broadband penetration currently at 46 per cent as at January 2023, the country still has to achieve 24 per cent penetration before 2025. Recall that a target of 70 per cent broadband penetration across the country by 2025 was set by the federal government in 2020.
The National Broadband Plan was designed to deliver data download speeds across Nigeria, a minimum of 25 megabits per second (Mbps) in urban areas, and 10Mbps in rural areas, with effective coverage available to at least 90 per cent of the population by 2025 at a price not more than N390 per 1 gigabyte of data (i.e. 2 per cent of median income or 1 per cent of minimum wage).
However, the penetration rose from 42.93 per cent in January 2022 to 46 per cent in January 2023, with the total number of mobile internet subscribers hitting over 152 million.
In 2020, when the broadband plan was launched, penetration stood at 38.49 per cent.
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But increase in broadband penetration has been majorly responsible for the growth in cashless transactions in Nigeria. The cashless transactions increased to N277.61trillion in 2022, according to NCC. This is a 41.58 per cent increase from the N196.08tn reported in 2021.
According to the Executive Vice Chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission, Prof. Umar Garba Danbatta, increase in financial inclusion, which includes increase in the use of payments, was dependent on broadband. Danbatta said the steady growth in broadband penetration was positively impacting other sectors of the economy such as healthcare, education, agriculture, finance, transportation, commerce, governance, and other sectors.
“Also, within the period under review, broadband penetration increased from eight per cent to 46 per cent, indicating that over almost 200 million subscribers are on broadband networks of 3G, 4G and 5G,” he said.
The NCC boss said broadband penetration was key to reviving the Nigerian economy. Quoting from the reports from the World Bank and the World Economic Forum, Pantami said 10 per cent of broadband penetration in any country would improve its GDP by at least 4.6 per cent.
The President of the National Association of Telecommunications Subscribers of Nigeria (NATCOMS), Chief Deolu Ogunbanjo, said the increase in broadband penetration had been a result of conscientious implementation of NBP by the NCC for the overall benefit of the economy to achieve a digital Nigeria.
“The Nigerian National Broadband Plan (2020-2025), along with the harmonisation of Right of Way charges across the states and protection of critical national infrastructure across the country, had a significant impact on the broadband penetration,” Ogunbanjo said, adding that broadband was critical to sustainable economic growth.
He quoted the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) Broadband Series as saying: “Broadband contributes to economic growth through more efficiency in business processes, acceleration of innovation and more efficient functional deployment of enterprises.”
In some countries, he said broadband increases the GDP by over six per cent. “The increase in broadband penetration is leading to the growth of Nigeria’s economy in a way that transcends the ICT sector,” he added.
He said the regulatory finesses of the Executive Vice Chairman of NCC, Danbatta, has been one of the central factors propelling the accelerated growth in Nigeria’s broadband penetration.
“When Danbatta assumed office in August 2015, broadband penetration was barely around 8 per cent and since then, his regulatory approach, which brought forth to the development of the first Strategic Vision Plan 2015-2020 under the leadership of Danbatta, has helped to accelerate the attainment and surpassing of the 30 per cent broadband penetration target in the initial NNBP 2013-2018,” Ogunbanjo said.
Since then, he said the commission had continued to churn out different regulatory frameworks, guidelines and regulations which have all helped in fast-tracking the implementation of various digital economy policies, especially the National Digital Economy Policy & Strategy (NDEPS) 2020-2030. It also helped to significantly improve the contribution of the telecoms sector to the national Gross Domestic Product (GDP), to the tune of 15 per cent as at the 3rd Quarter of 2022.
How we did it – NCC
In 2015, 217 access gap clusters were identified in the country affecting 40 million Nigerians without access to telecom services. Today, NCC said the commission had reduced the access gap clusters to 114 with 15m of the 40m digitally excluded Nigerians now having access to telecoms services. “In line with the commission’s Strategic Vision Plan (2021-2025), we are committed to addressing the remaining access gap clusters, which are areas outside the frontier of economic viability to ensure the remaining 25 million Nigerians have access,” Danbatta said.
Similarly, there were 47,000 kilometres of fibre optic cables laid across the country as of 2015. However, as a result of regulatory focus, there are now approximately 54,725 kilometres of fibre cables laid across the country through the efforts of some private companies in the sector.
In line with the federal government’s target, additional 120,000 kilometres of fibre are being planned. In this regard, the commission is working on last-mile connectivity to different parts of the country through leveraging the 40 terabyte capacity of six submarine cables on the coastal shores of Nigeria as at April 2022.
The licensing of seven Infrastructure Companies (InfraCos) to deploy fibre infrastructure across the six-geo political zones has also helped to galvanise increased connectivity. This will also bring about a reduction in the cost of data with a broadband penetration target of 70 per cent to cover 90 per cent of the population by 2025 as contained in the new Nigerian National Broadband Plan (2020-2025).
Dambatta said the commission’s regulatory priority areas for the next three years will include facilitating the attainment of 70% broadband penetration by 2025 and building very reliable and sustainable broadband infrastructure in Nigeria; consumer protection and empowerment; and consolidation of spectrum trading to ensure maximum and efficient usage of available frequencies.
Due to the importance of broadband infrastructure to national economic development and competitiveness, we have developed regulatory interventions and necessary partnerships to achieve the national broadband policy targets and objectives with maximum efficiency.
But analysts said there is a need to speed up the plan; otherwise, it would likely not be achieved.
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