The Right of Way (RoW) hike by fourteen states in Nigeria may have given the Minister of Communication and Digital Economy, Ali Isa Pantami a new sense of purpose and perhaps presented him with a golden opportunity to finally lay to rest the agelong problem in the telecommunication sector. It may also be a good time to dig in and push for a sector reset in the new decade.
Nigeria has already kicked off the decade with the renaming of the Ministry of Information and Communication Technology as the Ministry of Communication and Digital Economy towards the end of 2019. The change of name, according to the minister, is to propel the ministry to reposition its strategic objectives as laid out in the priority areas of this administration while accelerating growth and social inclusion.
The name also means Nigeria is thinking along the same lines as countries like Singapore, Thailand, Scotland, Benin Republic and Burkina Faso which not only have digital economy affixed to their ICT titles but are accelerating investments in technology in order to boost their economy in the new decade.
Nonetheless, success would only depend on how serious the Nigerian government is to address the challenges operators and consumers of ICT services face by judiciously implementing all its plans.
The ministry under Pantami plans to launch a new National Broadband Development Plan by March 2020. The plan is expected to review the target for broadband penetration in the country to about 70 percent and serve as a template to driving a digital economy for the country. Previous national plan didn’t fare very well.
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Ten years ago when Nigeria turned 50, ICT was also postured as one of the priorities of the government. Like this decade, there were expectations of digitising the country’s economy.
The previous decade saw the commencement of the national SIM card registration, Indian telecommunication company Bharti-Airtel bought controlling stake in Zain Africa which Zain Nigeria was a part, and the federal government through the Goodluck Jonathan administration taking social media more serious as it started to broadcast it’s activities on Facebook. The President Muhammadu Buhari administration stepped up it’s government service automation work which has seen significant improvment in ease of doing business.
The country has also made a lot of progress in several areas in the last decade including mobile phone penetration, internet access and broadband penetration moving from less than 10 percent to 38 percent by the end of December, 2019.
But the challenges still remain.
State government are a big part of the puzzle. Earlier in January, 14 of the states hiked the price of RoW from N300 and N500 to 3000 and N5000. Over the years, engagements between the federal and state governments over harmonisation of the RoW fees have failed the yield results. However, the Minister of Communication and Digital Economy says it is beginning to take more practical steps to resolve the problem, including holding regular meetings with the governors of the state.
“It is disheartening to hear that some states have decided to disregard these resolutions and have, in some cases, increased the RoW charges by over 1,200%,” Pantami said recently during a meeting with Kayode Fayemi, governor of Ekiti State and chairman of Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF). “This will, no doubt, impact negatively on the efforts being made by the federal government. It is established that there is a strong correlation between a country’s broadband penetration and its gross domestic product (GDP).”
New engagement with the governors could consider options for zero fees on Right of Way and collaboration between electricity distribution companies (DisCos) and fibre cable operators. DisCos and the operators can use the same RoW ensuring that both share the cost of laying their cables. Previous administration of the Nigeria Communications Commission (NCC) have tried to engage the DisCos through consultants without success. Given that the DisCos are currently overstretched in terms of the cost of infrastructure, a renewed contact with improved incentives might provide a different mutually beneficial outcome.
Experts also say the government and stakeholders can begin to think of alternatives in deploying fixed wireless internet to Nigerians. The Fixed Wireless Access Technology is being seen as the most viable option for telecom operators struggling to deploy services to customers in demand of connectivity speeds associated with fixed connectivity (on fibre technology).
“As an early use case for 5G, FWA will likely drive faster penetration for broadband, and likely get the regulator to reach its broadband penetration targets faster than on Fibre,” said Ifeanyi Akosionu, Business Director responsible for Telco, Media, Energy and Technology at Verraki Partners, a business solutions company. “The question is; would fibre connectivity serve only the metro and backbone use cases and less on access where the RoW issue is most challenging to operators?”
Apart from FWA, there is also satellite broadband technology which some operators like MainOne and Avanti Communications are beginning to deploy. Satellite broadband operates by sending and receiving broadband signal to a satellite about 22,000 miles in space. Because the satellite sits high up in space, it can provide equal quality of coverage to every home or business in its footprint. It is much more ideal for rural communities where fibre cables would not be able to reach.
Nigeria has made significant investment in satellite technology. The country currently have three functional satellites that are orbiting the earth and have largely been underutilised in view of the Nigeria’s space exploration ambitions. The ministry could leverage the assets to provide pervasive broadband services to rural communities.
