Industry Regulator, Nigeria Communications Commission (NCC) is engaging the State Governors under the auspices of Nigeria Governors Forum, and individually as State Chief Executives to ensure permits are granted to telecom operators to ensure the deployment of infrastructure.
It is understood that telecom and service providers are currently facing myriads of challenges, getting discouraged by exorbitant levies, taxes and other bottlenecks in the States.
“So, we are persuading State Governments to see the long term benefits of data availability and its relation to economic growth over and above immediate gratification of more revenue,” says Professor Umar Danbatta, Executive Vice Chairman, NCC at the First Annual Lecture of CKN News in his keynote address.
NCC boss said the Management of the Commission is also re-farming older fre-quencies held by operators to be used for data services, as well as considering giving operators the liberty to deploy spectrum resources allocated optimally by utilizing next generation technologies available in the global market.
“Two licenses have been issued to Infrastructure Companies (Infracos), to hasten deployment of fibre Optic infrastructure in Lagos and the North Central Region of the country.
He said the remains licenses for other regions are being prepared for licensing before the end of the year. This is one of our strategies for facilitating broadband deployment.
“The Infraco licensing will attract necessary investments in infrastructure to ensure support for the data segment and to ensure services are offered based on objective prevailing prices.”
Meanwhile, the protection of telecom infrastructure has remained one of the priorities and a matter of concern to the NCC. Hence, the Commission had consciously in the vanguard of advocacy for the declaration of Telecom infrastructure as critical national assets.
“This is one reason we are pushing for a speedy passage of the National Critical Infrastructure Protection Bill by the National Assembly. The passage of the Bill is expected to reduce vandalism and theft of equipment and facilities to enable us to address a critical challenge to data availability and quality of consumer experience,” he concluded