NCC, ICT Alliance to celebrate a decade of GSM

The Nigeria Communications Commission (NCC) in association with the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Publishers Alliance are putting plans in place for the hosting of the ‘A Decade of GSM’ forum in Lagos.

The event slated for August 2011, according to the lead organizer, Mr. Aaron Ukodie will x-ray how the entry of the global system for mobile (GSM) 10 years ago has helped to rev up the economy of Africa’s most populous country of 150 million people, Nigeria.

He also said that the Nigeria’s much touted mobile telecommunication revolution started 10 years ago on a positive process which has impacted in virtually all sectors of the economy including the financial, oil & gas, health and education sectors among others.

As said by him at the weekend, active players in the market of nearly 90 million subscribers comprise MTN Nigeria, Bharti Airtel Nigeria, Globacom Nigeria and Etisalat Nigeria.

He cited the 2010 findings by the London based Pyramid Research, the annual revenue from mobile services represents about 4 per cent of the Nigeria’s nominal Gross Domestic Product (GDP), while that of many African countries is between 2 per cent and 7 per cent.

This, Ukodie noted indicates a rising influence of the telecom sector in the overall performance of the Nigeria’s economy.

“Apart from leading the continent, Nigeria is one of the world’s most outstanding successes in terms of uptake of mobile telephony since the service was first launched in August 2001,’ he said.

Ukodie further said that the Executive Vice Chairman (EVC) of NCC, Dr. Eugene Juwah, would be one of the chief speakers at the 10th Anniversary GSM Forum, who had earlier described GSM revolution as one of the most outstanding landmarks of the country’s political democratization and the consequent shift to economic liberalization.

Juwah was quoted as saying “With only about 400,000 lines in 2001, with a dismal 0.4 teledensity, the number of active lines by end of January 2011 stood at 89.8 million lines, resulting in an impressive teledensity of 64.16. In terms of growth, Nigeria is ranked the largest and fastest growing telecom market in Africa and among the ten fastest telecom growth markets in the world, an indication of its robustness to return on investments.

“From a private sector investment of about US$50 Million in 1999 when the current democratic regime came in place, the telecom industry in Nigeria has by end of 2009, attracted more than US$18 Billion in private sector investments, including Direct Foreign Investment. More than N300 Billion has been contributed to the coffers of the federal Government through Frequency Spectrum sales, enabling government to plough back revenues earned from the sector for provision of development infrastructure at the various levels of government,” said Juwah.

The ICT Publishers Alliance consists of the premier media organisations focusing exclusively on the ICT sector including eWorld, CommunicationsWeek, IT Edge News.Com, IT World, and eBusiness Life.

The spokesman of the Alliance noted that series of activities have been lined up for ‘A Decade of GSM Forum’ and designed partnership with other stakeholders to commemorate one of the major highlights of technological transformation that has re-shaped most of Nigeria and Africa’s economies for good.

Remmy Nweke:
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