NCC woos broadband investors Executive Vice Chairman of the Nigerian Communi-cations Commission, NCC, Dr. Eugene Juwah, yesterday, in Bangkok, Thailand, highlighted the reasons why broadband penetration and services had been poor in Nigeria, challenging local and foreign investors to take advantage of the problems to invest in the Nigerian highly rewarding market. Juwah told a crowd of participants at the Leaders Lunch Forum of the ITU summit that despite the country being highly rated as one of the most vibrant ICT markets in emerging markets distribution to the hinterlands, quantum of broadband cables lying in the city of Lagos, had been the bane of improvements in that sector. He, however, promised that the first investors that would take to investment in the broadband sector of the country at the moment would consider themselves lucky in future as certain government support had been designed to ensure return on investment. He said: “I do not need to bore you on the figures of our population because you already know that Nigeria is the most populated black nation in the world. “You are also aware of the high ratings of Nigeria in terms of mobile penetration and general ICT growth. But we still have low broadband penetration.” Juwah, however, stated that to address the paucity of broadband penetration, “government has released a national broadband plan from 2013-2017. “We have announced open auction of our free 2.3Ghz spectrum, for wholesale service operators to provide last mile broadband services to our regions and hinterlands from January 2014.”
Posted on: Thu, 21 Nov 2013 05:23:56 +0000