Atcon, NIG Support for e-Business Life Broadband Summit

The Association of Telecommunications Companies of Nigeria (Atcon) and the Nigeria Internet Group have given their backings to the e-Business Life Broadband summit slated to hold in Lagos in February 2010.
Dr. Emmanuel Ekuwem, National President of Atcon, affirmed this in a letter to e-Business Life Communication Limited, organizers of the Summit. He stated that the association was delighted to endorse the summit as the topic is apt and will “give us an avenue to deliberate and prepare to systematically and gainfully channel and effectively utilize the expected broadband capacity by the middle of the year 2010 as well as Nigeria’s digital harvest in Year 2015.”
In the letter entitled “Endorsement of One-day Stakeholders’ Summit on Broadband Fibre Optics,” Ekuwem noted that the telecoms outlook for the Year 2010 clearly indicates the availability of capacity in large quantum during the second half of the year. “The question then is: what do we do with the expected bandwidth? How do we utilize these broadband to automate processes of national economic, social and political lives of our compatriot?”
According to him, Atcon’s National Executive Council has decided to collaborate with e-Business Life Communication Limited as the Summit will enable us answer some of these questions.
In a similar vein, the Nigeria Internet Group in its own letter signed by Mr. Lanre Ajayi, the National President, also noted that the future outlook of broadband infrastructure deployment in Nigeria looks good with the level of investment by operators, adding that “if the right environment is created the nation will benefit a great deal from these developments.”
“It is our opinion that the Stakeholders’ summit proposed by e-Business Life Magazine will help us collectively look at ways of tapping into the great opportunities that the expected massive rollout of broadband in 2010 will achieve and also look at ways to overcome possible challenges,” the letter added.  
Speaking on the summit tagged “Broadband Revolution: Harnessing Broadband for National Development,” slated for Tuesday, February 09, 2010 in Lagos, Mrs. Ufuoma ‘Daro, Editor-in-Chief of e-Business Life Communications, noted that while it is no longer news that Nigerian telecommunications sector is adjudged to be the fastest growing in Africa; this is only in the area of voice as it is not yet Uhuru in the area of data.”
She recalled the report of AfricaNext Investment Research, which had earlier disclosed that Africa’s broadband market will grow more than fourfold in five years from 2.7 million in 2007 to 12.7 million.
This prediction, she noted is already been reflected in recent developments in Nigeria, which are expected to bring about a revolution in broadband during the course of the year 2010. Some of these developments according to her, includes the advent of Glo 1, which is expected to cater for long term bandwidth requirements for voice and data transmission in the West Africa sub region; Main One Cable, which is expected to berth in June 2010. Others are the State Accelerated Broadband Initiative (SABI) of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) and the Wire Nigeria Project (WIN) as well as the already existing though not stable SAT-3, which is expected to become more efficient and effective once it gets a better manager. It is expected that these developments will boost the Nigerian broadband space remarkably in the year 2010.
According to her, the availability of broadband will boost capacity and cut down tariffs, thereby unlocking high speed Internet potential and creating growth opportunities for operators and equipment firms.
 “e-Business Life Communication Limited strongly believes that for the industry to benefit from this expected revolution and to continuously maintain its position of relevance in the global telecoms space, concerted efforts must be made to gainfully direct and fully utilize the broadband revolution to develop all aspects of the Nigerian economy,” she added.
Consequently, the Summit is expected to address issues of the last mile, content, Cybersecurity and e-Commence among others.