Executive Vice-Chairman (EVC) of Nigeria Communications Commission(NCC) Prof. Umar Danbatta has explained how Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) were able to emerge and thrive during the pandemic.
With over 3 million cases of the coronavirus disease and staggering casualty figures globally, the pandemic reached dreadful proportions, leaving trails of economic woes, even in the most advanced countries.
Delivering a keynote address at the 2020 Virtual Nigeria Innovation Summit, Danbatta represented by the Director, Public Affairs, NCC, Dr. Ikechukwu Adinde, the EVC said that the Commission’s initiative to license Infrastructure Companies (INFRACOs) to bridge existing broadband gaps has been very instrumental to the emergence and survival of SMEs.
The EVC noted that the SMEs have had to ride on the backbone of telecoms infrastructure during the pandemic.
According to Danbatta, “For innovation to thrive as the anchor for accelerating economic growth post COVID-19, a robust broadband infrastructure upon which ICT innovations will ride, is a necessity and an urgent one at that.
“Under my stewardship at the Commission, we realized that infrastructure gaps existed around the country impairing networks performance, and leading to poor quality of service. With the steady increase in telecom subscribers, the Commission decided that a robust telecom/ICT infrastructure was needed to meet up with growing demands for improved Quality of Service.
“It became imperative for us at the Commission to introduce drastic measures at ensuring Nigerians receive value for money.
“We intensified our focus on the established key performance indicators (KPIs) for quality of service by instituting a regime of rigorous and continuous monitoring of the networks to ensure that they operate in tandem with set parameters.”
Speaker further, he disclosed that the long term, the Commission’s initiative to license Infrastructure Companies (INFRACOs) to bridge existing gaps will further improve not only broadband penetration but the quality of broadband experience.
“On the InfraCos, the Commission is in the process of finalizing the six Infracos Counterpart Funding Agreement to galvanise the full rollout of broadband infrastructure on an Open Access Model (OAM) aimed at enhancing digital transformation and this will ensure there is Point of Access in each of the 774 local governments in the country.”
“The result of this initiative is that apart from meeting and surpassing the 30 per cent broadband penetration in December, 2018, in line with the NBP 2013-2018 target, NCC increased broadband penetration from less than 6 percent in 2015 to 43.30 percent by August 2020. This translates to 82, 653,247 broadband subscriptions in the country as of August, 2020,” he said. NewsDirect
