IXPN gives reasons for Nigeria’s high broadband costs, low internet penetration, others

The Internet Exchange Point of Nigeria (IXPN) says Nigeria’s low number of Autonomous System Numbers (ASN) is weakening competition, increasing broadband costs and limiting the growth of the country’s digital economy.

Mohammed Rudman, Chief Executive Officer of the Internet Exchange Point of Nigeria (IXPN), said this at a media capacity building training on Nigeria’s Digital Infrastructure Economy on Tuesday in Lagos.

The training was facilitated by the Media Training Room (TMTR) and Africa Hyperscalers.

He explained that autonomous system numbers are critical to internet ecosystem maturity, adding that every network connected to the global internet must have a unique number that gave it routing autonomy and operational independence.

Rudman likened autonomous system numbers to national and operator codes in telephony, explaining that they enabled networks to identify each other and exchange traffic efficiently without relying on a single service provider.

“Nigeria performs poorly on this indicator, because it has only one autonomous system number for every one million people, which is very low for a country of Nigeria’s size,” Rudman said.

According to him, countries such as the United States have 91 autonomous system numbers per million people, Brazil has 43, while South Africa has 13, underscoring Nigeria’s limited network diversity.

Rudman said the African region also lagged globally, noting that AFRINIC, the regional internet registry for Africa, had allocated only about 2,670 autonomous system numbers, the lowest among all five regions of the world.

He said in 2021 alone, AFRINIC allocated just 256 autonomous system numbers, compared with more than 7,700 allocated by APNIC in the Asia-Pacific region during the same period.

Rudman disclosed that only nine Nigerian states had up to three autonomous system numbers, with Lagos leading at 171, followed by Abuja, Rivers, Oyo, Ogun, Kano, Osun and Delta.

He said 15 states had no autonomous system numbers at all, leaving residents dependent solely on mobile network operators for internet access.

“If you go to a state such as Yobe or Gombe, with about three million people, there is no single Internet service provider apart from the mobile network operators,” he said.

Rudman attributed the situation to the dominance of mobile operators, noting that about 99.5 per cent of Nigerian internet users access the internet through mobile networks.

He said fixed broadband, wireless providers and satellite services together account for less than one per cent of users, limiting competition and consumer choice nationwide.

Rudman also cited high operational costs, multiple regulatory approvals and expensive transmission capacity as major barriers discouraging new internet service providers.

He said transmission capacity within Nigeria remained costly, noting that the cost between Ibadan and Lagos was higher than that between Lagos and London.

Rudman explained that technical skill gaps further worsened the challenge, as many institutions with public Internet Protocol addresses and autonomous system numbers lacked expertise to configure and route their own networks.

He said universities and public institutions often depended entirely on service providers, even when they possess the resources to operate independently.

Rudman added that the 2,000-dollar cost of acquiring autonomous system numbers from AFRINIC discouraged adoption, particularly in Africa’s low-scale ecosystem.

Speaking on Nigeria’s internet traffic localisation, Rudman said the Internet Exchange Point provided physical infrastructure for networks to interconnect and exchange traffic locally.

He explained that domesticated traffic grew from about 0.1 per cent at inception to four gigabits per second by 2015, rose to 200 gigabits by 2020, and has since grown by 500 per cent.

“As of December last year, we reached two terabits of traffic, which is really, really good,” Rudman said.

He said that about 60 per cent to 70 per cent of Nigeria’s internet traffic was now domesticated, largely due to global content providers such as Google, Meta, TikTok, Microsoft and Amazon connecting locally.

Rudman, however, said local content hosting remained weak, noting that Nigeria hosted only 22 per cent of the top 1,000 websites accessed by users, compared with Africa’s average of 34 per cent.

“Eighty per cent of those local websites, whether on .ng or .com, are not hosted locally,” he said.

Rudman said this explained why Nigeria’s traffic domestication was driven mainly by social media and foreign platforms rather than Nigerian-owned content.

He called for capacity building, IPv6 training, content localisation and collaboration with data centres to domesticate major Nigerian websites.

Rudman said IXPN and Africa Hyperscalers were working to onboard at least 100 new autonomous system numbers in Nigeria this year.

He urged the media to increase awareness, stressing that more autonomous system numbers would reduce broadband costs, boost internet penetration and create jobs.