Eugene Ikemefuna Juwah, executive vice chairman, Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), says the nation is yet to achieve global broadband internet standards, even with the proliferation of high capacity undersea cables on the country’s coastline. Juwah, who made this remark on Thursday at the 76th edition of the repackaged Telecoms Consumer Parliament (TCP) in Lagos, pointed out that broadband has been globally acknowledged as the foundation for the nation’s transformation to a knowledge-based economy.
According to him, the path to an efficient broadband service in Nigeria, Africa’s largest economy by GDP, has been a long and difficult one. “Internet connectivity has come a long way from a single international submarine cable system with 340GB total capacity installed in 2001 (SAT3) to four cable systems with international bandwidth capacity of over nine Terra bits in 2012,” he said.
Speaking the conference, themed, ‘Data Service Delivery: The Way Forward’, the NCC boss urged mobile operators to step up efforts towards ensuring better delivery of data service in order to meet the targets of the National Broadband Plan (NBP).
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“In fact, it has become more worrisome the kind of services most Service Providers sell to their subscribers, all in the name of 3G, while some even canvassed to have 4G but nothing has changed in data services. Consumer experience is nothing to write home about” he noted. In view of the foregoing, he explained that the commission has taken some steps towards realising effective deployment of broadband services in Nigeria.
“Our open access model has the ability of ensuring high quality internet experience for all stakeholders. The deployment of fibre optic cables by reputable Service Providers – Main One, MTN, Glo, WASL etc. has placed Nigeria among the comity of nations providing efficient internet service to its citizens,” he added.
Speaking in the same vein, Mariam Bayi, director, consumer affairs bureau, NCC, said, sourcing from the commission’s database, inability to browse, abnormal depletion of data, unsuccessful. D data renewal and unauthorised service renewal, were some of the most prevalent consumer complaint on data service delivery. According to her, during the period of October 2014, MTN, Etisalat, Airtel and Glo recorded 42.86 percent, 14.28 percent, 21.43 percent 14.25 percentile figures on data service delivery complaints. While noting that consumer satisfaction is critical to a sustainable telecoms industry, Bayi stated that efficient data service delivery is paramount to enhancing broadband implementation and penetration in Nigeria. She said that TCP is one of the initiatives of the NCC established to provide a platform for stakeholders to meet and address important consumer related issues.
Ben Uzor
