Nigeria ripe for broadband evolution - Juwah

DPA, Tony Ojobo, EVC, Dr. Juway and Head Media, Muoka

Nigeria from all intents and purposes is ripe for broadband evolution, says the chief executive officer, Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Dr. Eugene Juwah.

Speaking at an interactive session soon after the official opening of the 2012 West African Information and Communications Technology (WAFICT) Congress held in Lagos, Dr. Juwah noted that by conquering voice telephony, it’s time now to move on to broadband revolution.

He also said at the event with theme: Bridging West Africa Divide Through Broadband, that given the fact that the world has taken voice telephony as basic, while moving fast into the new world of data transmission, which defines the speed with which businesses are conducted in the cyberspace via the internet.

He described broadband as the speed at which the Internet highways transmit data from one end of the world to another, noting that with the current active lines in excess of 90 million against about 400,000 some 10 years ago, hence the growth of the past decade has been variously described as a revolution.

According to him by the International Telecommunications standards, Nigeria’s telecom growth is a huge performance at the 64.98 per cent teledensity compared with some 0.44 per cent in 2001.

“This is why Nigeria is adjudged one of the fastest growing telecommunications nations of the world and indeed, the fastest in Africa,” he said.

The economic impact of broadband penetration, he said, has been found to be quite impressive, stressing that recent World Bank studies have shown that in low and middle income countries, every 10 per cent point increases broadband penetration, which accelerate economic growth by 1.38 percentage points.

“This impact is greater than in high-income countries and equally greater than the impact of any other telecommunications service,” he said.

Juwah pointed out that alternatively, doubling the broadband speed for the economy would increase its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by 0.3 per cent points.

The aforementioned percentage points, he said, could appear small, but if applied to the Nigerian GDP at 40 trillion Naira, one could see an increase of over half a trillion Naira in the first instance and N120 billion the second.

Remmy Nweke
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