The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has said its current push to deepen Internet penetration would help the country achieve seamless e-governance. With 122.9 million active Internet subscriptions as at August, the commission said the government is now poised to take its services to online, bearing in mind that the citizens are also online.
Electronic governance or e-governance is the application of information and communication technology (ICT) for delivering government services, exchange of information, communication transactions, integration of various stand-alone systems and services between government- to-citizen (G2C), government-to-business (G2B) government-to-government (G2G), government- to-employees (G2E) as well as back-office processes and interactions within the entire government framework. The Executive Vice Chairman of NCC, Prof. Umar Danbatta, who stated this at an e-government forum held in Lagos, said Internet connection is at the heart of e-governance in any country.
“The Internet is an important infrastructure that must be available to both the government and the end-user citizens, businesses or other stakeholders to ensure effective interaction with the government,” he said.
The EVC, who was represented at the forum by the Director of Public Affairs, Mr. Henry Nkemadu, noted that the commission, in that regard, had continued to push various initiatives to deepen access to the Internet and by extension, broadband services in the country.
“The commission exceeded its target for broadband penetration in 2018 and will continue its drive towards universal access as detailed in the framework of its 8-Point Agenda.
As at August 2019, 2G subscriptions stood 122.9 million, corresponding to 64.42 per cent of the population. “Also, there were 49.7 million 3G subscriptions equivalent to 26.03 per cent of the population with 17.3 million 4G subscriptions representing 9.07 per cent of the population.
Broadband penetration on 3G and 4G, which are categorised as broadband networks, therefore, stood at 35.10 per cent in August, 2019,” he said.
The NCC boss added that the commission was also actively exploring the utilisation of television white space (TVWS) technology to expand affordable broadband services to rural areas, while it had issued Infrastructure Company (InfraCo) licences to some organisations to deploy fibre across the geopolitical zones with Access Points in all the 774 local government areas of the federation.
“In line with the next level agenda of the current administration, the commission hopes to increase the number of fibre deploy ment in Nigeria to 127,000 kilometres from its current 42,000 kilometres of fibre connectivity in the country. Through the InfraCo initiatives, therefore, the commission expects additional 30,000 kilometres of fibre to be added. This is aside the results expected from major mobile network operators (MNOs), who also earmark resources, on a yearly basis, to expand their fibre deployment.
“The NCC is also working with the Ministry of Communications and other necessary stakeholders towards addressing the perennial industry challenges such as the Right of Way (RoW) issues, multiple taxation and regulation, vandalism/fibre cuts, theft of telecoms equipment, insecurity, power problem, among others – all of which are critical industry issues – impeding fast broadband infrastructure deployment in the country, which has impacted the level of access to government, businesses and individuals to enjoy egovernment services,” the EVC said.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Samson Akintaro
Quelle/Source: New Telegraph Newspaper, 29.10.2019
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