Participants at Nigeria Communications Commission (NCC) organized workshop for legislators at weekend were told that e-banking and services relating to cashless economy are putting a lot of pressure on the telephone networks leading to deteriorating quality of service (QoS).
Stephen A. Bello, principal partner, KayafasKonsult Limited, in a paper titled: “The Impact Of ICT Infrastructure on Economic Development- An Appraisal Of Existing Infrastructure,” said that the effect of extra traffic imposed on the existing networks pose serious degradation in quality of service.
Bello who started with a call for improved infrastructure, said that one of the main indices for measuring economic development is the growth achieved by a nation over a period of time.
He said that growth in turn can only happen if there is additional investment in an economy.
Bello said: “Countries and economic blocks constantly make effort to attract both local and foreign investment to themselves. Nigeria, like any other nation has to compete for the limited investible capital available in the world’s economic system.
“Investors generally establish criteria for selecting and deciding on where and how to invest their surplus capital, one of these is the infrastructure available in the country. Good infrastructure lowers the cost of investment, thereby generating more return on capital or greater shareholder value”.
He identified ICT infrastructure as helps to lower the cost of doing business, and has multiplier effect in encouraging investment in other industrial sectors.
While appraising existing ICT infrastructure in Nigeria in terms of their availability, affordability, quality and adequacy, he classified infrastructure in this regard into Physical and institutional infrastructure.
The physical he listed to include: telephone, internet, while Institutional infrastructure entail ICT regulations, laws, guidelines, acts of parliament and executive orders.
He said that equal emphasis should be placed on both types of infrastructure if the ICT sector is to have a balanced and accelerated development.
On affordability, Bello said, “Cost of intercity-transport and international access are still very high; cost of voice calls moderate but still a lot of room for improvement. Roaming cost is very high even within the ECOWAS sub-region.
“Availability: (a) signal is available to about 70% of the population and 50% of land area. There is still a lot of ground to be covered. (b) A lot of international bandwidth is stranded in Lagos due to inadequate long distance infrastructure to carry it to the hinterland.
“Quality: the telephone network was designed and optimized for voice calls. It’s now made to carry a lot of extra traffic from smartphones, ( twitter, Facebook) which are data hungry devices.
“E-banking and services relating to cashless economy are putting a lot of pressure on the telephone network. The effect of this extra traffic is serious degradation in quality of service”.
Reeling out statistics on the internet structure in the country, he said that on availability only about 30% of Nigerians have access to the internet or have ability to use it, while the cost of internet service at about N1500/Gigabytes of data or N10,000 month for unlimited download is still too high.
“This translates to 55% of minimum wage as against 5% recommended by the International Telecommunications Union.
On quality, he said, “internet speed which averages about 100kbits/sec is grossly inadequate and service is also unreliable.
Bello told the participating legislator that, to address the challenges needs a review of the Acts establishing most of the institutional infrastructure under telecommunication circuit.
“Most parastatals that are concerned with the regulation or development of ICT have enabling acts which gives them legal authority to regulate the industry. However, many of these enabling laws are due for review in order to incorporate new technical development and services. ICT is a fast changing industry, hence enabling acts governing ICT should be reviewed every 10-15 years,” Bello said.
He further called for convergence hence the dividing line between ICT services is getting more blurred year by year.
The workshop organized by the NCC had as it theme: ‘’ ICT Infrastructure As A Key Driver For Economic Development: What Role For The Legislature?’’