Ben Uzor Jr
More rural communities in the country will have access to reasonably priced telecommunications services by 2012, as operators are making significant investment in rural network expansion, and taking advantage of submarine cable infrastructure to ensure that remote areas benefit from the GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) revolution, analysts told BusinessDay.
Available statistics show that about 40 million Nigerians living in the rural areas do not have access to basic telecoms services. Industry analysts told BusinessDay that Nigeria’s digital divide is still wide even with the country’s 80 million active mobile subscribers. According to the analysts, rural dwellers desire to be connected to the rest of the world but have no telecoms facilities to do so.
Telecoms service providers do not consider such areas as economically viable and therefore give them no attention. To this effect, a significant proportion of the country’s rural populace have, before now, been ignored in the telecoms revolution which had operators focused on cities for quick returns on their investment, analysts argue. This trend is changing with the commercial launch of Glo-1 and MainOne submarine cables, according to analysts who also said this development will usher in a new era of telephone and internet access in the rural areas.
Lanre Ajayi, president, Nigerian Internet Group (NIG) told BusinessDay: “Telecoms companies are looking at rural areas because the urban areas are more or less saturated. The phase of expansion will be the unserved and underserved areas. It has not come as a surprise to me because if they have succeeded in covering the urban areas and cities, the next logical step will be to address the rural areas”.
Globacom, owners of Glo-1, disclosed plans to leverage its massive 10, 000 kilometre national optic fibre backbone to push available bandwidth capacity to the hinterlands at more affordable rates. Besides, the country’s bandwidth market is expected to witness explosive price wars as a result of heightened competition in the submarine cable market. It is further expected that the price of bandwidth will fall from $2, 400 to $10 per megabyte as the number of submarine cables increases.
Currently, MainOne cable is already bringing down existing pricing model through the reduction of communications cost by 50 percent. Prior to MainOne’s commencement of commercial service in July 2010, BusinessDay gathered that the cost of bandwidth was between $1, 200 and $1, 700 per megabyte, but it has drastically reduced to the range of $500 to $700 at the moment.
Similarly, the West African Cable System (WACS) - an initiative operated by nine countries (including Nigeria’s MTN Group), intends to adopt an aggressive entry strategy that would see prices of bandwidth fall as low as $10 per megabyte in Nigeria, informed sources told BusinessDay. Mike Adenuga Jr, chairman, Globacom, at the launch of Glo-1 submarine cable in Lagos, said: “Today, I really feel excited because we are looking at a major step change in Nigeria.
“I promise you, things are never going to be the same again because now, the Glo-1 submarine cable has arrived and we can now connect it to our 10, 000km in-land fibre optic network. This is the time we can now provide our country and its rural populace with clearer lines as well as high quality internet services to any international destination at really affordable prices”. In the same way, MTN Nigeria and Huawei Technologies have signed a $40 million (N6 billion) deal to provide rural telephony in about 850 villages across the country.
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