New Telegraph

Broadband: 129 operators to drive 70% penetration in Nigeria

The 70 per cent broadband penetration target by 2025 seems feasible with the increase in the number of Internet Service Providers licensed to drive the technology.

The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) says the country’s broadband penetration as at June 2022 stands at 44.30 per cent with over 84 million internet subscriptions in the country. With additional 38 companies recently licensed by the Nigerian Communicatioms Commission (NCC), the internet service providers operating in Nigeria has increased to 225.

They are to compete with the mobile network operators in the provision of internet to the myriad of Nigerian data users and push internet penetration. As of December, 2021, the total number of internet services providing firms in Nigeria was 187.

However, NCC said it had licensed additional 38 firms as contained in its recently published updated list to bridge the internet access gaps in the country. The newly licensed companies include Elon Musk’s company, Starlink, whose licence was approved by the telecom regulator in May this year.

While other licensees will be leveraging the existing bandwidth capacity in-country to provide last-mile connectivity for Nigerians, Starlink, which is expected to launch its service this month, said it would deploy its satellite technology to provide internet service across Nigeria.

The rising number of ISPs is expected to boost the country’s broadband penetration target of 70 per cent by 2025. However, locations of the service providers show that most are still concentrated in the urban areas, as the digital gap between urban and rural Nigeria continues to widen.

Many of the Internet Service Providers are located in cities such as Abuja, Lagos and Port Harcourt. The ISPs have continued to complain over stiff competition between them and the mobile network operators who also provide internet data services. The newly licensed ISPs are to also face the same challenge of the MNOs.

The ISPs said the bigger operators — MTN, Globacom, Airtel and 9mobile — are affecting their business negatively since they (the MNOs) provide the same services in the retail market at cheaper rates at their (ISPs) own loss.

Speaking on behalf of the service providers recently, the Chief Executive Officer of VDT Communications Limited, Mr. David Omoniyi, appealed to government and NCC to find a way of regulating the market. According to him, the ISPs, who could be classified as small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the telecoms market, are dying by the day.

“Indigenous ISPs are disappearing, more than 200 have been licensed so far by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), but only a few of them are still operating. They are largely SMEs and need support to survive,” he said.

While emphasising the role of the ISPs in the country’s quest for ubiquitous broadband, Omoniyi added that the implementation of the National Broadband Plan 2020    the National Broadband Plan 2020-2025 requires the input of every stakeholder to succeed, hence the ISPs, which play significant roles in taking the services to the last mile must be supported.

“We need to carry everybody along and one way is to keep the ISPs alive. We need the majority of them around to keep employing people and to take the service closer to the people. There is a need for targeted intervention for them to survive,” he added.

While mobile network operators such as MTN, Airtel, Globacom and 9mobile are also offering Internet service alongside voice and other services as permitted by the Universal Access Service Licence (UASL), the ISPs are licensed to provide internet service only.

Due to the domination of the mobile operators in the market, the ISPs are mainly servicing the corporate segment of the market. The MNOs, as of July this year, had a total of 151 million active internet subscriptions, while the core ISPs had 210,597 active internet customers

Read Previous

Court convicts Vietnamese for trafficking in Pangolin Scales

Read Next

AfDB: Climate change costs Africa 15% of GDP per capita growth

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *