Nigeria’s broadband penetration reached 42.02 per cent in June, 2020.
This was revealed by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) in its latest statistics.
This means the country’s broadband penetration has so far grown by 4.22 per cent in 2020.
The country’s broadband access-gap clusters have reduced too.
Prior to 2015, 217 access gap clusters were identified in the country affecting 40 million Nigerians without access to telecoms services.
The Executive Vice Chairman (EVC) of NCC, Prof. Umar Danbatta, said: “But today, we have reduced the access gap clusters to 114 with 15 million of the 40 million digitally excluded Nigerians now having access to telecoms services. We are committed to addressing the remaining access gap clusters, which are areas outside the frontier of economic viability to ensure the remaining 25 million Nigerians have access”.
To the EVC, this was achieved through the efforts of the Universal Service Provision Fund (USPF).
Nigeria’s focus is now how to expand the fourth generation technology (4G) infrastructure deployment.
The new National Broadband 2020-2025 Committee’s report which was submitted on Tuesday, February 18, 2020, contains plan to “deliver data download speeds across Nigeria, a minimum of 25Mbps in urban areas, and 10Mbps in rural areas, with effective coverage available to at least 90% of the population by 2025 at a price not more than N390 per 1GB of data (2 per cent of median income or 1 per cent of minimum wage)”.
The NBP addresses three of the eight priorities that the Federal Government assigned to the Federal Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy, and the parastatals under its purview, for implementation.
These priorities are the implementation of broadband connectivity and execution of a plan to deploy 4G across the country, as well as the development and implementation of a digital economy policy and strategy.
Similarly, the broadband subscription reached 80,215,614 as against 78,784,226 recorded the previous month.
This implies that the country’s broadband subscription has increased by 8,061,790 this year.
The sector contributed 14.30 per cent to GDP in the second quarter of 2020.
