“New Telecoms Licences Will Meet 30% Broadband Target” – NCC

The Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC, has expressed confidence that the planned new telecommunications licence would help the country meet the 30 per cent broadband target set in the National Broadband Plan 2013-2018.

The Executive vice chairman,Umar Danbatta who disclosed this known during a reception organized for the Minister of Communications, Adebayo Shittu by the Association of Telecommunications Companies of Nigeria, ATCON, in Lagos at the weekend was represented by the director, public affairs, NCC, Tony Ojobo.

He said notwithstanding the fact that as at today, only 10 per cent broadband penetration has been achieved, the Commission is in a race against time and as such was doing all it could to achieve the 30 per cent target as contained in the National Broadband Plan.

Danbatta said one of such measures the Commission is looking at is the licencing of the remaining five companies as Infrastructure Companies (InfraCos). Already, NCC has licenced MainOne Company Ltd and IHS as InfrasCos to provide broadband build-out in Lagos and North Central zones.

The five remaining zones are South West, South South, South East, North East and North West.

“Once these licenses come on stream, access to broadband will be available to many more people than we currently have” said Prof. Danbatta adding that the licensing process for the 2.6GHz spectrum has begun. “Information Memorandum (IM) was recently released and we expect to conclude the process on May 16, 2016.”