The Nigeria Broadband Council as urged the
National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) to close the funding
gap in the Nigeria Internet Registration Association (NIRA) to enable it meet
up with high levels of uptake, reports ITRealms.
The Council at the end of its quarterly
meeting in Abuja, the nation’s capital recently made this call for adequate
funding for NIRA.
They adduced to ITRealms that NIRA must reduce the cost
of .NG to be globally competitive, stressing that in order to accelerate .NG
domain uptake, NITDA, its supervisory agency, must step in with relevant funds
to close gaps evident in pent up demands.
Also, ITRealms
gathered that in recognition of the crucial role broadband plays in inclusive
development and in a bid to increase awareness and drive demand, the Council
acknowledged the work of online market spaces in encouraging Small, Medium
Enterprises (SMEs) to bring their products and services online and urged the
SME Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN) to fund or drive an awareness
campaign that will get many more SMEs online.
Just as they pointed out to ITRealms in a press statement endorsed
by Mrs. Efem Nkanga, the Special Adviser Media to the Honourable Minister of
Communication Technology, Mrs. Omobola Johnson, that the Broadband Council at
its previous meeting pushed for increased Third Generation (3G) coverage to 50
per cent of the Nigerian population by the end of 2015.
The Council commended the efforts of
Universal Service Provision Fund (USPF) for the timely completion of its Information
and Communication Technology (ICT) Access Gap Study.
They concluded this study would further
help operators to service latent demand, stressing that the significant work by
the USPF has given real empirical data to the issue of which areas of the
country have connectivity.
The Council further scored overall progress
as good but needed acceleration on items such as pricing and metro fibre.
Following the recent announcement of the
Infraco License winners, the NCC’s work on wholesale and cost based pricing to
improve the affordability of access to the internet would soon be available.
Council concluded that progress was still
too slow and challenged the ICT industry to see to it that the broadband plan
targets were met.
ITRealms
recalls that Broadband Council was inaugurated on July 16, 2013 and is made up
of 19 members chaired by Dr Omobola Johnson. The Council charged with the
responsibility of monitoring implementation modalities for the approved
Nigerian National Broadband Plan 2013 – 2018 has been working to ensure that
Nigeria achieves a five-fold increase in broadband penetration by
2017/2018.
+Remmy Nweke (ITRealms) +Efem Nkanga +Tony Ojobo
ITREALMS ... delivering news for ICT4D
pix: Mrs Uduma, NIRA president
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