Nigeria Looking for National Broadband Policy

MTN Nigeria Communications Ltd has called for a National Broadband Policy to serve as a roadmap for broadband penetration and service delivery in the country. Akinwale Goodluck, MTN Corporate Service Executive, made the call at a capacity-building session for journalists in Abuja.

Goodluck said that lack of a broadband policy posed greater challenge to ICT services in the country. “Government also needs to articulate policies and strategies for driving broadband usage through e-Governance, e-Commerce and e-Economy services. Broadband penetration is meaningless without appropriate regulatory environment which will enhance the delivery of converged services,” he said.

 

Speaking on the Importance of Broadband Access in Nigeria, Akinwale noted the unavailability of backbone infrastructure, Local Content Development and Rollout Support also hindered the penetration of broadband across the country. He said that in order to encourage aggressive rollout of long-distance and metropolitan fibre infrastructure, MTN in December 2010, added 693.8 km of backbone and 44.64 km of metro fiber to expand its capacity.

Akinwade said that widespread penetration of broadband infrastructure and services were critical for actualising the country's socio-economic potentials. He noted that with Broadband penetration, there could be access in rural communities to health information technologies (HIT).

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