President Muhammadu Buhari on Thursday launched the National Broadband Plan (2020 – 2025) in Abuja. Also, the federal government has reiterated its commitment to a minimum of 70 percent Broadband penetration across the country by 2025, as contained in the Nigerian National Broadband Plan 2020-2025.
The plan, launched yesterday at the Digital Economy Complex, Abuja, alongside the National Emergency Centre and the national toll free number among other projects, defines broadband as connectivity delivering a minimum of 10 Mbps in rural areas and a minimum of 25 Mbps in urban areas to every Nigerian at an affordable price and quality by 2025.
According to the plan, “Rapid rollout of broadband services will address various socio-economic challenges faced by the country, including the need to grow its economy, create jobs, rapidly expand the tax base, and improve digital literacy and educational standards.”
This will also address identity management and security challenges through the effective use of technology, increase financial inclusion and deliver a broad range of services to its people to improve the quality of life and work towards attainment of Social Development Goals set by the United Nations for 2030.
The new broadband plan is designed to deliver data download speeds across Nigeria of a minimum 25Mbps in urban areas, and 10Mbps in rural areas, with effective coverage available to at least 90 percent of the population by 2025 at a price not more than N390per 1GB of data, i.e. 2 percent of median income or 1 percent of minimum wage.
The plan showed that internet services in the country are currently provided on 2G, 3G, and increasingly 4G mobile networks. However, though 4G coverage is available to 37 percent of the population, download speeds in the country are noted to be generally uncompetitive with other countries in the same income bracket.
Given the current state of technology, development, and applications of broadband technology, the 30 percent penetration achievement lags the aspiration of the country as the developed world marches towards widespread deployment of 5G technologies, while the country is yet to achieve significant 4G coverage and adoption.
The plan focused on recommendations in four critical pillars ranging from infrastructure, policy, demand drivers and funding and incentives.
According to the plan, an environment of constrained government spending and significant expenditures focused on electricity and other infrastructure areas of the economy, the plan relies on being led and funded by the private sector to ensure its realization, coupled with appropriate incentives from Government.
This would require better alignment of interests between industry players and the Government to achieve optimal success.
The plan revealed that government will be required to provide necessary incentives to private sector players and to create a more enabling environment for existing operators and potential new investors to drive additional investment into broadband infrastructure and services in the country.
“The plan remains ambitious given the Capital requirements estimated at a range of $3.5- $5 Billion to achieve effective execution over the five year period of 2020 – 2025 and can only be achieved if government and private sector align and harmonize activities regarding spending and incentives to achieve optimal results”, the plan has showed.
