NCC boss reveals why internet is poor in his local govt, other locations

The Executive Vice Chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC, Prof. Umar Danbatta has pointed out that the standard for internet speed in Nigeria is 1.5 megabytes per second, revealing that while this is obtainable in Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt, the local government he hails from has a connectivity speed of 500 kilobytes per second.

Speaking on Monday while declaring open the International Telecommunications Union, ITU, Annual Regional Workshop in Abuja, he blamed the inability of some locations in the country to have 1.5 megabytes per second internet connectivity speed on poor infrastructure and charged the workshop to come up with ideas on how to tackle this.

His words, “The infrastructure that is necessary to facilitate access to the internet must be available. This is why the country has been divided into seven zones, each zone has a licence to deploy broadband infrastructure. The whole essence is to provide that connectivity which is necessary.

“A connectivity that is easily available, that is easily accessible, and of course affordable to the masses of this country so that access to the internet can be facilitated at the right speed, at the right time irrespective of where our citizens are located. I believe other countries are doing the same. Access is very important.

“In Nigeria, we have more than 200 access gaps. We know where these gaps are. These access gaps deprive close to 40 million Nigerians access to the internet. Unless and until we plug these access gaps, many of our citizens will continue to live without access to the internet especially the high-speed internet connectivity.

“The speed we are talking about is about 1.5 megabytes per second. This speed is not attainable in many parts of this country. In places like Lagos, to an extent, Abuja here and Port Harcourt which is our oil hub, speeds higher than 1.5 megabytes per second are obtainable but in my own local government, you can hardly get the speed of 500 kilobytes per second. So we should make sure there is internet connectivity equitable in the 774 local government areas of Nigeria.”

In a goodwill message, representative of the ITU Regional Office, Marcelleno Telor explained that the workshop is an annual event which the ITU regional office organises with the aim of providing a platform for African countries to share experiences, strengthen their knowledge and raise awareness on matters concerned to the year’s theme through a multi-stakeholders discussions or approach the evolving gaps.

According to him, “For this year, we decided to combine the annual workshop on human capacity building and internet governance training. The particular workshop differs from the others we held before in the sense that it is a combination of the internet governance training and the annual workshop that we organise.

“The theme selected was: Strengthening the capacities in international internet governance in Africa. ICTs have changed the way we live, the way we work, the way we study and the way we entertain ourselves. The internet is practically present in all sectors of the society and the economy. It is the foundation of digital economies.”