The event featured participants in the industry including, investors, regulators, government representatives as well as professionals in the sector.
However, participants agreed that actualisation was also dependent on how fast the industry could do away with obstacles that worked against the initial plan. He said the Federal Government’s first step was to establish clear strategies and milestones for the attainment of affordable, accessible and available broadband infrastructure and services through the Nigerian National Broadband Plan, NBP.
“Yet even more pertinent to broadband penetration is the fact that six infrastructure companies have been licensed to drive the development of infrastructure across the nation’s geographical zones and Lagos,” Danbatta added. He listed the gaps identified in the Nigerian National Broadband Plan 2013 – 2018, to include the omission of key stakeholders on the responsibility matrix, Funding and investment modalities to be addressed in the new plan; and participation of all stakeholders in the review process through suggestions to improve on the new strategy document.
Osondu, who decried the poor fibre deployment in the country said infrastructure sharing is lacking and should be encouraged among various players to boost the level of penetration. That Nigeria must come to the realization that transit is dead in the country because network providers have been treating content providers as consumers.
According them, Nigeria is in dare need of local solutions to her name which we can put our thump on, and argue that local Content Policy has not been protected enough by government and should be engaged to do so. In the same vein, without proper gazetting of the ICT Act, they said there is little the country can achieve. For them, one boat we must not miss is local content boat because we live in a global system.
Similarly, they adduced that we should develop Social Licenses so as to leverage adjacent services available in the ecosystem. Again, the stakeholders equally resolved that ICT related policies must be constantly reviewed to reflect the contemporary realities. Government should come up with solutions that will address the infrastructure vandalism and RoW challenge.