NCC Offers Subsidy To Infracos To Connect 33.7milliion Nigerians

The Executive Vice Chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC, Umar Danbatta has given the assurance for the provision of subsidies to telecommunications Infrastructure Companies, InfraCos, that would take telecom infrastructure and services to underserved and un-served areas round the country.
The NCC Boss, who spoke in a keynote delivered on Thursday, April 21 at the Universal Service Provision Fund (USPF) organized ‘Focused Industry Stakeholders’ Forum and Hackathon Award’ held in Lagos with the theme: Universal Access: Eliminating The Inclusion Barriers, said that efforts are been channeled from different angles in the industry to further bridge this gap.Danbatta during a question and answer session said the new framework being fine-tuned by a taskforce set up by him is building subsidy for InfraCos as part of the roll out plans to fast track telecom access to un-served and underserved areas nationwide.
The regulator plans to issues licences to InfraCos to cover the five remaining geo-political zones in Nigeria namely: South West, South, South East, North East and North West. Already, North Central and Lagos zones have been awarded Infraco licences to IHS and Main One Cable Company.

Danbatta noted that the unserved population in Nigeria has been reduced from 36.8 million (24.5 per cent) in 2013 to 33.7 million (22.5 per cent) in 2015 based on the Access Gap study and using the 150 million population benchmark.

“With effective partnerships, we can achieve more in the coming years”, Danbatta stressed.

According to him, the USPF will be playing significant role in achieving four of the eight points agenda of the commission towards repositioning the telecommunications industry.

The EVC said USPF, which is an arm of the NCC, would play significant role in the facilitation of broadband penetration; improve quality of service; promote ICT innovations and investment opportunities and facilitate strategic collaboration and partnership.

 

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