Previous Next

Nigeria’s declining broadband connections threaten national plan

Nigeria has seen a consistent dip in broadband connections, a development that casts a pall of doubt on the ambitious National Broadband Plan (NBP 2020-2025) that aims to achieve 70per cent broadband penetration and 90per cent population coverage by 2025.

According to stats obtained from the Nigerian Communication Commission (NCC) at the weekend, December 2023 broadband subscription stood at 94,757,184 representing 43.71per cent while that of November fell to 90,765,310 subscriptions and 41.87 per cent. In October, it dropped further to 88,907,930, representing 41.01per cent; September 88,554,318 representing 40.85 per cent; July 89,730,341representing 47.01 per cent. August subscriptions stood at 86,993,472 marking 45.57 per cent; June figure is 89,730,34 representing 47.01per cent; March 92,033,267-48.21per cent; April 91,886,980-48.14per cent; and May 92,169,176-48.28per cent.

However, this year, January subscriptions stood at 92,195,937 marking 42.53 per cent while February 93,395,591-43.08per cent marking a marginal gain in broadband. This comes after a 2.7 per cent monthly drop in January.

Ironically, Nigerians consumed 721,522.00 terabytes of data in January while 694,804.54 terabytes was consumed in February when the country gained marginal increase in broadband penetration

According to the NCC, mobile broadband accounts for over 99 percent of Nigeria's broadband connections due to the convenience and low cost of getting mobile lines.

President, Association of Cable Telephone, Cable Tv and Internet Subscribers of Nigeria (ATCIS-Nigeria), Sina Bilesanmi, said the rise in broadband connections reflected the increase in active mobile lines.

The small monthly rise in broadband connections lifted the country's broadband penetration rate to 43.1 percent, up from 42.5 percent in January.

NBP 2020-2025 targets 70per cent broadband penetration and 90per cent population coverage by 2025.

Bilesanmi said the target is still achievable, adding that it requires collaboration among telecom industry stakeholders including the NCC, Mobile Network Operators (MNOs), state and local government councils and industry advocacy groups.

“Expansion of telecom infrastructure into the rural areas is very important in this respect. The big MNOs do not necessarily have the incentive to go into rural telephony because of returns on investment. That is however where the virtual mobile network operators would come in and close the gap,” he said.

Almost a decade ago, the NCC came up with the infrastructure companies (InfraCos) initiative to bridge the digital divide. InfraCo licences were issued to companies to build infrastructure in the six geo-political zones in the country while Lagos got a separate InfraCo licence. It is not clear why many of them have not gone to site so they could access the counterpart funding running into about N30billion set aside for them by the NCC.

Similarly, it is not clear if the impact of the Universal Services Provision Fund (USPF) is not being felt by the MNOs to dig further in access provisioning into the hinterlands.

Also MNOs continue to battle a number of challenges while erecting telecom infrastructure, including security concerns, theft and vandalism of telecom equipment, and issues with states issuing Right of Way (RoW) charges. Perhaps the most vexatious is the predilection of non-state actors to willfully shut down base transceiver stations (BTS) unless a ransom is paid.

"Remember that until recently, the economy was battling foreign exchange (forex) illiquidity. Telecom equipment importation is dollar denominated. Thus, forex scarcity had resulted in MNOs sourcing the currency in the parallel market at cut throat rates, leading to higher import bill costs and ballooning of the capital expenditure (capex) component of their costs.

"We are however optimistic that with the policies of President Bola Tinubu taking firm roots, things would get better.”