•Vows to curb illegal SIM registration
From Adanna Nnamani, Abuja
The Nigeria Communications Commission (NCC), has said that vandalism of telecommunications infrastructure and poor investment in the sector due to economic problems, were some of the major obstacles inhibiting it from achieving its broadband penetration target.
NCC Executive Commissioner, Technical Services, Mr Ubale Maska, stated this during a media parley with the Commission’s Executive Vice Chairman, Dr. Aminu on Tuesday in Abuja.
According to the Nigeria National Broadband Policy (NNBP 2020–2025), 70% of Nigerians will have access to broadband by the year 2025z However, as of August this 2023, data available showed that broadband penetration in the country stood at 45.57%.
Maska said the Commission records an average of 60 destructions of telecom facilities across the nation on daily bases, which causes service transmission outages and affects the country’s capacity to meet the goal.
He said: “You should be aware that there is a consistent vandalization of infrastructure in this country. Everyday, if you were monitoring the situation like you should, you would be aware that the major operators suffer multiple cuts all over the country.
“Some days, you could get as many as 50 to 60, 70. We get hundreds of these cuts every month. So, things are not getting easier. These things cost money, they are bought with foreign exchange, so getting to constantly maintain these things is becoming quite a drag.
“For instance, if you look at the road projects going on, you tend to see road construction projects breaking fibres all over the country. This is an unfortunate situation. It is really inhibiting achievement of these targets, they also impact on the quality of service because once there is disruption depending on the infrastructure involved, you could actually get service cuts in an entire area.”
The EC pointed out, however, that in order to address the situation, the Commission was putting in place a real-time, round-the-clock monitoring system and also plans to deploy satellite internet services.
In another engagement, the EVC of NCC, Aminu Maida, said that the commission was working hard to reduce the incidences of illegal SIM registrations in the country.
The EVC said: “Before the SIM-NIN linkage, there was SIM registration. In 2021, when we launched the SIM linkage, the previous ones were considered as legacy SIM. We just told them to go and Link their SIMs to their NINs. Registration from that day onwards, was to be done with provision of NIN.
“Recently, we gave a notice to say that we will deactivate all SIMs that are not linked to the NIN. That pre-enforcement notice is still on, we are working on the background.
“Some of the questions you raised also came to us and we investigated. What we found out is that most of the time, the picture quality of legacy SIMs do not match the new definition in our SIM registration regulation of 2021.
“Initially they were barring those numbers and telling them to go and update their photographs. But as at now, they will just invite you at your convenience to go and update your data.
“There must be something wrong somewhere, especially if it is a legacy SIM. Go and correct them because we want to be sure that whoever is holding the SIM, is the owner of that SIM.
“If you follow us right from time, the illegally registered SIM cards are still there and we are working assiduously to make sure that we reduce its occurrence to the barest minimum, so that Nigeria will sleep with your eyes closed at all times. So, just bear with us when they ask you to come forward, there is an issue.
According to him, “The commission has come up with a different way of monitoring this by not waiting for quality report service to come in after a period. We monitor it now as it happens in real time. That is the plan now. Instead of waiting for a total report, we are looking at every single site over the country to see what is going on there, so that if there are issues, they are addressed faster than if you had to wait for when the monthly reports come in.
“Now, to maintain the plan on course, the commission has started to look elsewhere. Ordinarily, most of those targets were based on assumptions that we will get fibers laid all over the country. This is not happening for many reasons. The investment is not coming in as it should. You all know the economic situation in the country, so the Commission has now turned to looking at satellite broadband. There is what is called aloe Earth orbit (LEO), like starlink and many others that are coming. So, we are hoping that this will now provide the necessary coverage all over the country as well as the connections to the operators. “We are aware that it is expensive at this stage, but what makes it attractive is the fact that it is not just one company coming in, but, there are many others because once we have competition, the cost would go down.
“So, the hope is that those broadband targets would still be achieved but from a different approach. So, rather than fiber optics, we will rely more now on the satellite connectivity that is promising to give us much faster roll out, covering all areas of the country. “