by Femi Longe

If we are to maximise the potential customer base in Nigeria, the services will not target just city-dwellers but should be capable of meeting the needs of those in the hinterlands who arguably have larger quality of life issues.

One critical success factors for the technology revolution in Nigeria, which I wrote about in my previous Y! Policy Hub article, is universal access to good quality internet at a reasonable rate.

Unfortunately, few issues draw common agreement from Nigerians like the poor service delivered by our Internet Service Providers (ISPs).

It is normal for the average Nigerian internet user to have tried four different providers, each with a completely different modem, all in the hope that the next one will be better than the last.

While there have been improvements in broadband coverage, quality and costs, the current state is still not up to the minimum standard required for Nigeria to firmly stake her place in the information age.

Our man-made Internet dam

Our situation is all the more ironic because between 3 companies MainOne, Globacom (Glo1) and MTN (WACS), we have enough bandwidth sitting on our Atlantic shore to increase our current internet penetration and quality more than tenfold.

Over the last 4 years, these companies have invested billions of dollars laying undersea fibre optic cables connecting Nigeria to Europe for the purpose of carrying internet bandwidth.

Unfortunately, a man-made ‘internet dam’ has kept more of the bandwidth on the coast with less than 5% of the capacity in the hand of the customers who sorely need the bandwidth downstream.

The challenge lies in the lack of sufficient inland fibre optic infrastructure to carry the bandwidth to offices and residences in the hinterlands in a manner more efficient than microwave which is the current predominant means of last-mile transmission in the country.

It is, as described by Mr Usen Udoh, a Senior Director at Accenture Nigeria, “like somebody who just brought a huge pot of soup and put it in front of your house and there are no plates to go there and serve the food and bring them in.”

 

Why is it important to get the bandwidth into the hands of Nigerians?

The potential for web-enabled services powered by mobile technology to solve the many lingering quality of life issues in Nigeria is clear.

As the costs of mobile devices drop and their capabilities increase, economics will drive the development of innovative applications of the technology for social change in areas such as education, e-commerce, entertainment, agriculture, recruitment, e-government, civic engagement in governance and B2B interactions.

For citizens to properly consume these services, their access to the internet should not be as unpredictable as a roll of a dice. And if we are to maximise the potential customer base in Nigeria, the services will not target just city-dwellers but should be capable of meeting the needs of those in the hinterlands who arguably have larger quality of life issues.

Considering that global spend on IT products and services for 2013 is forecasted to grow to $3.7 trillion USD by international research firm Gartner, you can make projections on the loss of valuable income to the Nigerian economy for every day we can’t get quality bandwidth to the consumers.

This is not to say there is absolutely no inland fibre optic coverage in Nigeria.

Several private companies including Suburban & Phase3 Telecom have invested in inland fibre optics line predominantly serving large business clients. Galaxy Backbone PLC is a public enterprise of the Federal Government with a mandate to provide fibre optic coverage to Federal Government ministries, departments and agencies.

These investments however leave out the bulk of the masses as there is limited incentive to extend out to serve them.

 

Way Forward

There are several options available to solve this challenge and they all revolve around expanding the infrastructure to deliver broadband equitably across the country, managing access to the infrastructure for all providers and ensuring that the consumers are getting good value for their money spent on the service wherever they are located.

Differences arise on who should be investing in the infrastructure and the implications of this on the end users in terms of price and quality of service.

The government, through the Ministry of Communication Technology and the National Communications Communication, should clarify Nigeria’s approach to this through a National Broadband Policy developed and agreed upon with industry players. Discussions on the broadband policy have been on for years but the policy is yet to be approved.

In 2010 industry players and civil society organisation convened a Broadband for Nigeria Stakeholder’s Forum to deliberate on the challenges and way forward for ensuring equitable distribution of broadband infrastructure and services across all 774 local governments in the country.

The forum came up with a strategic framework which served as input to the National ICT Policy. Some of those who drafted the framework are now in government and we hope this would have an impact on implementation.

Main One Cable Company gave their thoughts on the national policy in a paper titled Broadband Nigeria the Next Frontier which was presented at a stakeholder’s consultative forum organised by the NCC. A statement from Ms. Funke Opeke, the company’s CEO in a recent interview with ThisDay sums their position.

She said “Government should step in, look at existing infrastructure and set a regulatory price that will enable people buy bandwidth at a government determined price instead of each operator building its own backbone and putting its own price.”

Approving this policy is a critical first step in breaking the dam and letting the broadband flow through to the people.

When that happens, perhaps we can look forward to the day when we don’t need multiple dongles to get our internet groove on anywhere we are in Nigeria.

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Femi Longe is a co-founder and Director at Co-Creation Hub Nigeria (CcHub), an uber-cool social enterprise dedicated to co-creating innovative solutions to social and commercial challenges in Nigeria using technology. He is a learning experience designer, facilitator and social enterprise consultant. Follow him on twitter @femilonge and he blogs at www.femilonge.com

 

Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija.