The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), has said it would undertake a review the Infrastructure Company (InfraCo) licensing project.
The Executive Vice Chairman (EVC), Dr. Aminu Maida, made this known during his first meeting with the chief executive officers (CEOs) of telecom companies in Lagos.
He said the InfraCo project, which got stalled under the administration of the immediate past EVC of the Commission, Prof. Umar Danbatta, would be re-examined as part of efforts to deepen broadband penetration in the country.
According to him, with a target of 70 per cent broadband penetration by 2025 as set in the Nigeria National Broadband Policy (NNBP 2020-2025), the Commission now has a very short time to deliver on the target.
NCC’s data as of August, showed that broadband penetration in the country is at 45.57 per cent.
“A lot has been done with the Infrastructure Company (InfraCo) licensing. We just have to re-imagine, look at it again, and see whether that is the right approach and re-imagine how we approach it. We now need to start getting into the States, and perhaps we might need to sit down and see how we can do that differently. Again, on the broadband issue, we need to increase the investment.”
The NCC boss told the telecom operators that quality of service in the telecommunications sector is non-negotiable as he called for industry collaboration to make this a reality.
Maida further urged the CEOs to see their role in industry as important, to consolidate on the achievements already recorded in the sector, which is an enabler of Nigeria’s digital economy.
“People actually expect telecom services to work. I don’t think they really appreciate what it takes to deliver these services. So, it has come to a stage where they just see telecom service as a utility like water and electricity. Like a social service, it needs to work. We need to really come together in the industry and deliver value to the customer,” he said.
Continuing, he pointed out that:“When it comes to compliance, this is an area where we are going to be placing a lot more focus, and things are going to be a lot more urgent. I am not going to be asking for compliance after the fact. That is going to be a very key area of focus for me. So, we owe it to ourselves to benchmark ourselves against the best, not against other sectors. We have to just take ourselves as setting the benchmark for every person else. So, let people compare and say we have to be as good as telecom.”
The NCC, during the tenure of Danbatta, embarked on the InfraCo project to fast-track the rollout of infrastructure across the companies. Seven firms were licensed to provide last-mile services in the six geopolitical zones with Lagos standing alone and MainOne’s subsidiary, Infraco Nigeria Limited and IHS were the first two companies to be licensed in 2016 to cover Lagos and the North Central zone including the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) respectively.
IHS, however, returned the license a few years later., after encountering some bottlenecks but by 2018, five other companies were licensed to cover North East Zone (Brinks Integrated Solutions Limited) North West (Fleek Network Limited) South-South (Raenna Nigeria Limited) South West (Odua Infraco Resources Limited) and Southeast (Zinox Technology Limited).
In 2021, Broadbased Communications Ltd. was issued the licence returned by IHS to complete the coverage.
However, none of the 7 companies have been able to roll out infrastructure in line with their licensing condition, which was to cover the access gaps, particularly in underserved and unserved areas of the country, and provide a wholesale layer to transmission services on a non-discriminatory open access price regulated basis.
The InfraCos were to be responsible for providing a national broadband network to service providers.
