Senator Anyanwu lauds Galaxy over NICEP

Chairman, Senate Committee on Communications, Senator Sylvester Anyanwu, has given kudos to the management of Galaxy Backbone plc for successfully implementing an increased percentage of the National Information, Communication and Education Programme (NICEP) of the federal government.

NICEP is an Information and Communication Technology (ICT) policy intervention by the Federal Government targeted at the realization of its e-governance and Millennium Development Goals objectives.

This intervention also was designed to provide the benefits of ICT to all areas of the country particularly hard-to-reach remote areas and underserved communities through the deployment of 5,000 Very Small Aperture Terminal (VSAT) nodes nationwide.

Anyanwu who spoke recently after a tour of the NICEP Network Operating Centre (NOC) in Abuja, built and managed by Galaxy Backbone Plc, expressed delight with what he saw.

The Senate Committee Chairman, who was at the facility to inspect the progress made so far in the implementation of the project and find out ways his committee, could assist Galaxy towards delivering the NICEP project objectives as envisaged by the Federal Government ICT intervention policy.

He was conducted round the state-of-the-art facility by the Managing Director, Galaxy Backbone, Mr. Gerald Ilukwe and the NOC operations manager, Mr. Dauda Oyeleye.

“I am very impressed with the quality of your Network Operating Centre from where as I understand the company is currently providing connectivity, co-location and other enhanced quality services to its customers including Government MDAs and driving digital access to rural communities and the education sector,” he said.

He advised Galaxy to create more awareness and enlightenment about its facility to the various Governments including States and Local Governments as well as elected politicians for them to take advantage of the facilities already in place for the development of their people.

Earlier in his comment, Mr. Ilukwe used the analogy of a water works and a reservoir which must be in place prior to the laying of water pipes and the actual supply of water to the consumers to reaffirm the fact that the NOC which is the heart of the NICEP project accounts for 50 per cent of the project implementation, whereas the equipment procurement and installation make up 30 per cent.

He also informed the senator that the implementation of the project experienced some delay especially in securing the land allocated to Galaxy since August 2007.

There was also site readiness issues based on stipulated criteria for rolling out remote sites.

According to Ilukwe, NICEP project actually kicked off in July 2008 with arrival of the first batch of NICEP equipment at Lagos ports.

During the facility tour, Senator Anyanwu and his team were shown the array of top of the breed IT equipment installed at Galaxy’s Network Operating Centre as part of the NICEP network.

The team equally visited the company’s Interactive Distance Learning (IDL) project through which Galaxy enables the delivery of multiple, live synchronous e-learning lessons to an unlimited number of geographically dispersed students through either Personal Computer (PC) or Television (TV)-based classrooms using a friendly student/instructor interaction.

The IDL project combines high quality bi-directional video, voice and educational tools like slide projection, whiteboard, chat and application projection.


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