Galaxy Backbone Empowers Over 200 Engineers, Others under NICEP

Over 200 Nigerian Engineers and Technicians have been empowered with the latest knowledge in installation and maintenance of Very Small Aperture Terminal (VSAT) technology by Galaxy Backbone Plc as part of its commitment to entrench capacity building and technology skills transfer in the implementation of the NICEP project.
Galaxy Backbone is a wholly independent company with the primary mandate of setting up and operating a unified Information and Communication Technology (ICT) infrastructure platform.
Mr. Omotayo Williams, Galaxy Backbone NICEP, project manager, made this disclosure during a media enlightenment tour of the NICEP warehouse in Lagos, where the equipment for the delivery of 5000 Very Small Aperture Terminals (VSAT) nationwide under the NICEP project are stored.
According to him, these techies exclude the IT professionals in the employment of Galaxy Backbone Plc, who have equally been trained both locally and internationally to ensure sustainability of the NICEP project. These trains were conducted in the US and Israel by Hughes Network Systems and Interlek Systems, respectively.
During the tour of the NICEP warehouse by ICT editors, Williams listed all NICEP equipments imported and stored in the warehouse to include 1.2m antenna – 3,251; 1.8m antenna – 486; 2.4m antenna – 351; VRT Phone -5451; solar system -4105; Batteries – 7892; VAST indoor and outdoor unit – 3925; Multi-media screen – 52; Equipment rack – 3925; Inverter – 352; VAP – 882 and Personal computers – 941.
Also speaking, Mr. Prithwish Baisya, the Rt.Com Project implementation manager said that even within the warehouse the focus is to source locally those items that can are produced in the country such as electrical cables, galvanized pipes, solar panel frames and electrical connectors including the knitting of the cables for easy installation of the VSAT equipment. This, he said, “avails them the courage to do good and quality job at the end of the day”. “It makes things easy and the quality is assured,” he declared.
Enlightening the media further on the proposed platform for internet penetration in the remote areas of the country, Williams said each remote location that will serve as a community centre is expected to contain at least, four Personal Computers (PCs) linked to the internet with other communication equipment to enable it offer other value added services such as e-health and e-learning facilities where necessary. He stressed that in some areas where the remote site is deployed as cyber café, the unit would contain up to 10 PCs. He noted that “the beauty of it is that when deployed in any remote area, the telecommunications aspect could be in use simultaneously with browsing of the World Wide Web (www), without any atom of distraction or disruption of service. While the each remote location is powered on solar energy, it has backup capacity in case of a fault which could last for three days”.
 The media was also shown the logistics centre where installation activities at remote locations are monitored and feedbacks from the field are tracked and thus enable the company to address issues as quickly as possible.
Mr. Franklyn Ginger-Eke, Galaxy Backbone, manager, corporate communication, said that in order to ensure that relevant parastatals are carried along in the implementation, a NICEP Implementation Committee (NIC) was constituted by FEC and the committee is briefed regularly by Galaxy every two-months on the progress of the implementation.
However, the company attributed the delay in the pace of roll-out to the need to have proper security at remote sites by beneficiaries of the project.
According to Ginger-Eke, “providing security at remote locations is not the responsibility of Galaxy and it will be irresponsible of Galaxy to go ahead and locate such costly equipment in unsecure locations and then gleefully announce that 5000 sites have been connected only to discover months later that the equipments have been vandalized or carted away. Another factor slowing down roll-out is the issue of readiness of sites by beneficiaries such as states and MDAs. As soon as Galaxy receives lists of sites that are ready, we plan to roll-out at an average of 200 sites per week to enable us to complete the target in 6 months”.