40m Nigerians Yet to Access Telecoms Services, Says NCC

The Executive Vice Chairman of Nigeria Communication Commission (NCC), Prof. Umar Garba Dambatta, on Wednesday in Kano said over 40 million Nigerians are denied access to telecommunication services due to the inability of telecommunication companies to spread their services into the rural areas.

Dambatta, however, canvassed for the need for a new techno-paradigm shift in the communication sector in order to find solutions to the challenges in the communication industry as globalization has taken us a step backward.

 Dambatta who spoke during Emerging Technologies Consultative and ICT Innovation Forum for North-West held in Kano stated that “We are addressing this deficit in two ways. One is to address the infrastructural deficit in the long term. In the short term, we need to deploy more and base transceiver stations. In the meantime, the base transceiver stations are about 58, 000; and that is not enough for a population of about 190 million.

“At an average of 10 base transceiver stations per year, it's going to take this country 20 years to bridge the gaps and bring telecommunications services to people living in the rural areas. People living in rural areas don’t have the patience to wait for 20 years. So, we are looking at rural technology solutions that can bridge the gap in two years. This is ongoing.”

According to him, NCC is driving the local content, using the ICT Ecosystem with the resources available such as the infrastructure, technology facilities, human intelligence to improve the economy, adding that “if those infrastructures are available, they can now be used to drive wealth for the 40 million Nigerians who are not benefitting from such services.

He further stated that “the ICT Innovation Forum has become necessary to promote local content with emphasis on the Tech ecosystem, identifying unmet needs and facilitate Public-Private Partnership (PPP).

“Based on this premise, we themed our forum, “Developing Nigeria’s Tech Eco-system: Imperative for Improving Local Content.” With the growing pressure of globalization, every government as well as captains of industry are charged with the burden of finding ways to ensure that we remain competitive and capable of fulfilling local demand.