The minister who spoke during a plenary session at the ongoing Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation (CTO) 53rd Council Meeting and 2013 Forum taking place in Abuja, said for every $1 spent on OFC, between 60 and 80 pence goes as cost of access.
She said this punitive cost of access could make the rather expensive mobile broadband adoption to be in use for a long time, adding that this cost must go down for cost for broadband access cost to go down and become ubiquitous for everyone.
According Mrs Omobloa, global internet access has attained the 40 per cent mark while in developing countries the story is still nothing to write home about.
"Global Internet penetration rates have continued to increase and almost 40 per cent of the world's population are now online. However, the numbers of people connected to the Internet are fewer in developing countries than in more industrialised ones.
"One of the priority areas of this Forum is to assess the different stages of broadband development and discover best practice strategies for moving forward; and is a topic that will be instructive in increasing Internet penetration rates in developing countries.
According to her, while an increasing number of countries, including Nigeria, have recently developed or are developing National Broadband Plans; countries that had done so earlier (such as the United Kingdom) provide important opportunities to learn about the implementation of such plans. These countries provide valuable insights on what works and why; as well as what can be improved upon and what to avoid during implementation.
The importance of driving affordable broadband access in the country, she disclosed is underpinned by the fact that of the 25 million users of FaceBook in the country, more than half are age below 25 years of age. She said this could be turned to advantage in the light of the limitless opportunities available through internet connectivity which could only facilitated by making the cost of access to the internet cheap.
Dr Juwah said there is need for sustainable policy to drive accelerated broadband penetration in the country to allow a large number of the populace to tap into the huge opportunities the internet has provided.
He said the national broadband plan has incidentally provided the template for the methodology that will be adopted be it private sector-driven or wholly public sector-driven or a "partnership led by the private sector."
He said this is important for deployment to both areas that are economically viable and those that are not. He said the regulatory approach will be multi-dimensional and will engender free and fair competition.
According to him, the strategy must include a framework that will accelerate broadband access through open access model guided with "proactive enforcement" to discourage anti-competitive practices
The minister and the EVC said the incentives available through the Universal Service Provision Fund (USPF) will continue to be used in driving broadband penetration, adding that government will also explore other ways to incentivise the operators.
0 comments: