The Association of Telecommunications Companies of Nigeria (ATCON) has rallied stakeholders to meet the country’s 2020-2025 target of reaching 70% broadband penetration.
This is while Nigeria continues to make efforts to deepen its broadband penetration in the telecom industry.
During the conference and exhibition on the national strategic mobilization for the update of the national broadband target of 70% on the theme “Achieving the new fixed target of 70% broadband penetration”, M Ikechukwu Nnamani, Chairman of ATCON, said the meeting was an opportunity to examine the relevance of the Nigerian policy environment to the telecommunications operating environment.
Further, he said the significance of the event is to complement the various strategic activities already undertaken by the Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy and all agencies under the ministry to quickly achieve the set penetration target. broadband in Nigeria.
“As often with us at ATCON, the strategic objectives of this very important event are to complement the various strategic activities already undertaken by the Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy and all agencies under the ministry to achieve the set goal of broadband. penetration into Nigeria at high speed.
“Leveraging ATCON’s wide range of sub-groups for effective participation in the new Nigerian National Broadband Plan 2020-2025 by enabling them to access the plan and suggest various ways to accelerate the achievement of the goal set by the government and also serve as a real platform to galvanize necessary inputs that reflect the thinking of the telecom and ICT sector,” he said.
Nnamani said that “discussions at the conference will focus on two panel discussions: the status of broadband implementation in Nigeria by MNOs, submarine cable operators, InfraCos, fiber providers metropolitan areas, long distance providers and the impact of broadband infrastructure on OTT service providers, fintech / e-commerce operator, equipment vendors, VAS providers, satellite operators, Internet service providers, representatives of data center manufacturers and operators.
In his address, Garba Danbatta, Executive Vice Chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), said that Nigeria has one of the largest telecommunications markets in Africa with an estimated population of over 200 million people.
He said enabling full connectivity and broadband access to at least 70% of the growing population is a vision that the Nigerian National Broadband Plan (NNBP) seeks to achieve and exceed in the timeframe of 2020-2025. .
Danbatta further noted that at the launch of NNBP in 2020, broadband penetration, which was largely driven by mobile technology, was just under 40%. He said that in December 2020, a penetration of 45.93% was achieved.
