WAITING FOR INFRACOS TO BRIDGE THE DIGITAL GAPS

Infraco services may take some time to arrive their sites, writes

Sonny Aragba-Akpore

Apart from the city centres and semi-urban areas of Nigeria, Internet connectivity and voice calls in the rural areas are a nightmare.

While the urban centres have 3rd-generation (3G) and fourth generation coverage in most instances, the rest part of the country makes do with 3G or third generation. A possible reason why connectivity remains poor most of the time. Although Mobile Network Operators (MNO) have nearly 40,000 base stations in parts of the country, these are not enough to create a robust networks that will ensure seamless coverage in the rural areas.

This perhaps explains why the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) came out with Open Access Model for Next Generation Optic Fibre Broadband Network Initiative in 2014.

This initiative led to the introduction and licensing of infrastructure companies (Infracos) to provide last-mile services in the six geopolitical zones with Lagos standing alone for its peculiarity being the commercial hub of the country.

Main One Cable Company Limited and IHS Limited got the first two licenses to cover Lagos and the North Central zone including the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) respectively.

But for reasons not too far from bottlenecks for commercial roll-out of its services, IHS declined the license a few years later and as we write no new license has been issued for the North Central Zone.

The NCC has however named five companies 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).

The Infracos were expected to cover access gaps especially 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.

They are also expected to provide layer 1 metro dark fiber services on a commercial basis, and deployment of metropolitan fibre to provide transmission services of point of access to seekers.

They are to leverage existing inter-city fibre to deploy their services, connect with the intercity regional fibre to provide seamless connectivity to access seekers.

But curiously, none of the licenses has shown good fate in the deployment of service. Although the NCC had put in place or promised subsidies to the regulator says disbursement of subsidy will depend on the milestones attained by each operator. And that is where we are right now.

Conscious of the government’s position to develop a digital economy, the Executive Vice Chairman (EVC) of NCC Prof Umar Danbatta said recently that the NCC was working on sustainable funding options for effective implementation of the national fibre project.

And as part of the fallout from the 2020 – 2025 National Broadband Plan (NBP), 10 more Infracos may be licensed soon when (NCC) gets the nod of the Federal Executive Council (FEC)

When Danbatta hosted a delegation of officials of the United States Trade and Development Agency (USTDA) on March 19, 2019, he told the visitors about the plans for the Infracos citing it as a Public-Private Partnership (PPP) to address the Capital Expenditure (CAPTEX) of the licences and government involvement will be predicated on the milestones recorded by each licencee.

“We are trying to build intra-city and intercity networks to connect citizens all over the country irrespective of wave they live and whatever their circumstances.

But nothing significant has taken place since then even when the NCC gave a five-month deadline to the infracos to move to site and commence roll out activities by May 2022. This matching order issued in December 2021, maybe the answer to the long-awaited commencement of Infraco services.

But the Infracos may still be plagued by a number of challenges that will hinder smooth, deployment of services.

In no particular order, Lagos has 841km to be covered by the licence, Main One Cable while the Odua Infraco is expected to cover 7,480km in the South West and Raeana will cover 3,144km in South South. Zinox Technology has 1,314km to cover the South East while Blinks Integrated 6,342km for North East and Fleek Network 9,781km for North West.

The licence for Northcentral which is yet to be named will cover 9,392km. Apart from the issue of funding one of the delays in release of counterpart funding approval, the Infracos are expected to face the hydra headed right of way issues with state governments. There are also issues of multiple taxation and regulations awaiting them in the zones.

Besides the vandalism of telecom infrastructure has not abated and so the issues of delay in the ports for customs clearance even after coping with Foreign Exchange scarcity.

But there are other active connected lines, and other angles to this crisis. With a population of over 200million paucity is still there. 204m and a tele density of 103%, coverage is still a far cry from being robust because dwellers in this coverage are predominately in the urban centres.

Rural communities and parts of the country are plagued by crises of banditry, kidnapping, armed robbery, vandalism of equipment, poor road networks and electricity. Some are even war-torn states like Zamfara, Katsina, Borno, Kaduna, and Sokoto have had network shut down to contain banditry.

Without sounding a death knell, the truth is that Infraco may take a longer time to arrive their sites.

Perhaps the NCC may quietly commence the review of the infraco project to fast-track approval for counterpart funding.

The NCC may also reopen its engagement with the Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF) in line with the Resolution of the National Economic Council (NEC) on multiple taxations, levies, and charges on ICT infrastructure of March 21, 2013.

The law enforcement agencies in this process may be approached to address the challenges, especially in the North East and North West if the Infraco deployment may be realized. Between 2001 and 2003, the federal government initiated the National Rural Telephony Project (NRTP) and over $200m disbursed to approved companies for the project. It ran into a hitch. It was designed to reduce rural-urban drift, and this perhaps explains why the NCC is slow in taking the decision to release the counterpart funds to the infracos. So what becomes of the licence if the proposed beneficiaries do not have access to funds to actualize the project?

Will this end up as a failed project?

Aragba-Akpore is a member of THISDAY Editorial Board