CTO’s 10 prescriptions on 5years strategy for Nigeria

The Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation (CTO) has given the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) 10 prescriptions to focus on as part of its 5-year strategy plans.

CTO in a submission made available to ITRealms Online, outlined 10 focus areas including competition, convergence, cybersecurity, universal access cum service in broadband, and electronic-governance.

Also CTO listed local content, skills development, Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) on Information Technology-enabled services, equitable access to Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs), as well as the digital broadcasting switchover.

These were contained in CTO submission to the 2012 Stakeholders meeting organised by NCC in Lagos as part of horning its five-year plans, with the theme “Harnessing Communications Technology as a Catalyst for National Development.”

Between 2013 and 2017,  CTO urged the apex telecommunications body in Nigeria on competition to development a policy and regulatory framework that fosters competition, which must assure that consumers gain the best value for money in service and that local industry also develops, stressing that the fact that competition drives prices down is self-evident.

On competition to development a policy and regulatory framework that fosters competition, which must assure that consumers gain the best value for money in service and that local industry also develops, stressing that the fact that competition drives prices down is self-evident.

Regulatory of convergence, CTO noted has become a growing trend that has started in response to the convergence of technologies, adding that a key issue towards addressing regulatory convergence is the scope of the converged regulator’s mandate, as some converged regulators handle postal regulation and some mandates extend to content regulation.

Cybersecurity, the organisation cited has increasingly identified as a key area of intervention by ICT regulators that is required in view of the serious impact it has on today’s communication infrastructure and the ubiquity of ICT channels.

For the universal access cum service in broadband, CTO pointed out that in view of the impressive gains made by Nigeria in promoting rural access through the interventions by the Universal Service Provision Fund (USPF), it is apparent that the next frontier is going to be broadband connectivity. It should be borne in mind that creation and utilization of local content is closely related to the expansion of Broadband connectivity.

Additionally, CTO stated that due to progresses made in Electronic Governance (e-Governance), ICT regulator’s roles expected to expand from managing and developing telecommunications sector to facilitating and even promoting the utilization of ICTs in Governance.

CTO identified local content as having two aspects of importance with respect to creating local content, namely the promotion of local content development and digitizing existing content. The telecom regulator for Commonwealth countries, see skills development in the ICT sector as a catalyst for prosperity.

Even, CTO pointed out that Business Process Outsourcing in Information Technology-enabled services will facilitate increasingly being focused on by national planners for economic growth. While equitable access to ICTs, CTO said has made impressive gains in provisioning ICT access for rural areas through the intervention of the USPF.

Whereas the Digital Broadcasting Switchover, NCC was tasked to play a central role to ensure smooth transition from analogue to digital by the 2015 deadline based on its mandate “to ensure an efficient management including planning, coordination, allocation, assignment, registration, monitoring and use of scarce national resources in the communications sub-sector, including but not limited to frequency spectrum.”

Remmy Nweke

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