Executive Vice Chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Prof. Umar Dambatta, said Nigeria’s telecommunications sector contributes over N6tn to the country’s Gross Domestic Product in each quarter of every year. He made this remark on Tuesday at the headquarters of the NCC in Abuja while hosting the Senate Committee on Communications led by its Chairman, Senator Oluremi Tinubu.
Dambatta told his guests that Nigeria attained 38.49 per cent broadband penetration in December 2019, adding that the number of active mobile subscribers stood at 184,699,409 as of the same period. According to him, active Internet subscription to Global System Mobile network stood at 125,728,328, while fixed wired telephone was 9,670 as the tele-density had risen to 96.76 per cent as of December 2019.
Dambatta further revealed that as part of measures to deepen broadband penetration, the commission had begun the implementation of the Open Access Model for Infrastructure Deployment through the competitively selected infrastructure companies.
The NCC boss told the senators that the initiative would provide broadband fibre and connectivity to every Local Government Area in Nigeria. According to him, this would result in a total of 774 fibre points of access with a minimum speed of 10Gbps that would translate to, at least, 28,902km of fibre deployment in the next four years.
Dambatta informed the lawmakers that the commission was faced with challenges such as poor power supply, multiple taxation and insecurity in some parts of the country.
Senator Oluremi Tinubu said the committee was on oversight visit to the commission to assess the implementation of 2020 budget, as well as fine tune plans for the preparation of 2021 budget.
