Prof. Umar Garba Danbatta, Executive Vice Chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), has assured Nigerians that all hands are on deck to ensure a significant reduction in the cost of data by 2025.
During an interview in Lagos, Prof. Umar gave the assurance on reduction in data cost and also said that telecoms subscribers’ expectations from NCC are high and they want the commission to do more and diligently look into the area of fast data depletion.
While speaking, Prof. Danbatta said, “NCC is already working hard to address their concerns. We did our benchmarking recently and we discovered that the cost of 1 Gigabyte of data has come down below N500, which represents a 50 percent reduction from what it used to be.
“There is however a target to reduce data cost to N390 per Gigabyte by the year 2025 and we are almost there. The target, as enshrined in the National Broadband Plan (2020-2025) is to achieve N390 per Gigabyte in the cost of data by the end of 2025, but the recent benchmarking that the NCC did, showed that the cost of data has reduced to more than 50 percent from what it used to be at the beginning of 2020.
“For us as industry regulator, this is a good sign that data cost is coming down and that the issue data depletion as experienced by subscribers, is gradually been addressed.
“NCC has instituted a forensic audit on the cost of data, just like we did with the cost of Short Message Service (SMS) on a particular mobile operator, where we discovered that the operator unlawfully surcharged its subscribers to the tune of over N100 million and we have asked the particular operator to make refunds immediately and the operator has commenced refund to the affected subscribers. This could have gone unnoticed, if not for the quick intervention of NCC. We have plans to even extend the forensic audit on SMS to other telecoms operators.
“So like we did for SME, we are doing the same for data to find out the reason for fast data depletion and it will be carried out across all Mobile Network Operators (MNOs). By the time the audit is completed and the result is out, perhaps we will have better information of what is happening in the data segment, as it relates to fast data depletion”.
He added: “The telecoms industry is still fraught with the challenge of telecoms infrastructure deficit because of the existing clusters of access gaps in the country, which NCC is fast reducing.
“Infrastructure deficit will deprive telecoms subscribers of the right quality of service that they deserve and the NCC is working hard to address infrastructure deficit in the country in order to boost access and connectivity”
He further said that NCC needs to act in line with the government policies on infrastructure and also continue to deploy broadband infrastructure in order to solve the challenges of congestion on the networks as well as ensure the right speed of accessing telecoms services.
According to Danbatta, “Government is looking at the additional deployment of fiber optic cables in the next four years, in addition to what is currently on the ground.
“The NCC is desirous that telecoms services are pervasive and accessible to all Nigerians, irrespective of their location, even in remote and isolated communities. We need adequate infrastructure to address quality of service across networks.”
“Speed in accessing the internet is very important, hence the National Broadband Plan recommended two digits target of 25MB per sec for urban areas and 10MB per sec for rural areas of the country.
“Another area of target as recommended by the National Broadband Plan, that will enhance the quality of service, is the broadband penetration, and it recommended a target of 70 percent penetration by 2025, but there is a recent presidential order that we should attain 60 percent broadband penetration by 2023”. He added.
Prof. Danbatta explained that broadband penetration has deepened to 45.93 percent as of October 2020, from less than 6 percent it was in 2015.
Given the current statistics, Danbatta is convinced that Nigeria will exceed the projected broadband penetration of 60 percent by 2023 and 70 percent by 2025.