Ben Uzor Jr
If Nigeria intends to fully attain its economic target of been one of the top 20 economies in the world by 2020, then there is an urgent need to develop a robust broadband strategy at national level that would assist in speeding up the deployment of broadband infrastructure in order to give optimum connectivity within the country as well as transform facets of the economy that could take advantage of the internet for wealth creation, Adebayo Oyewole, head of marketing and strategy, Main One Cable, revealed.
Available data from the GSMA show that wherever there is a 10 percent growth in broadband, it translates to 2 percent growth in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for any country. Oyewole, who spoke at a broadband forum organised by e-Business Life held in Lagos told industry stakeholders that Ghana had commenced work on its broadband strategy in 2009 which earnestly seeks to achieve 50 percent broadband penetration rate by 2015 and an 80 percent reduction in broadband cost by 2015.
According to him, affordability remains one of the fundamental reasons why so many Nigerian do not have access to broadband, further adding that Nigeria will require additional underwater cables to ensure that the vast majority of the Nigerian populace has reliable access to affordable broadband internet services. “Today, some people are basically saying well, Glo-1 cable has come in, West Africa Cable System (WACS) is coming in, some people are still on SAT-3, and MainOne cable is in town.
“Is there too much broadband capacity in Nigeria? Our response to this is no. If you look at data from the World Bank, our market penetration for every 100 inhabitant is still at about 1.9 percent for sub-Saharan Africa. When you compare 1.9 percent to 62.5 percent for every 100 inhabitants who have broadband accessibility in the United States or 60.5 percent on the average for the EU, we still have a very long way to go in terms of making broadband available and affordable for people”, he added.
In his paper presentation entitled: ‘Transforming Nigeria with Broadband Access and Connectivity’, Oyewole, pointed out that the company was the first submarine cable firm offering open access, wholesale broadband capacity in West Africa with the vision to expand the much need capacity and reduce the cost of broadband communications in Nigeria. According to him, Main One cable had transformed the wholesale bandwidth pricing structure to provide more value to customers.
Giving lucid insights into some of the trends to expect in the broadband market over the next 12 to 18 months, Oyewole said pricing will become better with the introduction of plans from Glo-1 and WACS. “Content creation from younger Nigerians will increase tremendously and it is expected that Nigeria will sustain its position with the highest number of Internet users. There would be an astronomical increase in the number of Nigerian on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. Nigerians will be able to download and access digital content such as music, research, training, film on You Tube at higher speeds.
“Corporates will be able to deploy more innovative solutions for their customers and see a channel shift, for example, banks will continue to see a migration to the utilization of online banking services”, the Main One executive posited. The company has developed a well-managed connectivity platform towards the realization of effective Internet telecommunications access across the continent. In addition, Main One intends to stimulate growth of key economies along the West Coast of Africa through reliable and affordable access to global information, data, resources and markets.
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