The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has undertaken an organisational assessment to accommodate the Sixth Generation (6G) Technology.
This innovation was captured in its Strategic Management Plan (2020-2024). The Commission also used an adapted political, economic, social, technological, environmental and legal/Regulatory(PESTEL) model to carry out an organisational assessment covering its internal and external environments.
The Commission declared in its SMP 2020-2024; “The focus of the macroenvironmental analysis was based on a communication industry study and developments in emerging technologies that are shaping the industry, including digital economy policy and strategy of Government.
“For the microenvironmental analysis, the emphasis was, key communication stakeholders need analysis and value proposition, while internal situation
analysis centered on people and culture issues”.
Below are key highlights of findings and conclusions of the various analyses:
Trends in Global Telecommunication Industry
“Two decades of disruptive innovation has led to the commoditization of telecoms industry products with over-the-top (OTT) players presenting the stiffest competition.
“In most cases, this arises primarily from the diversification of the service range afforded by OTT platforms. These
disruptions have blurred the distinction between telecoms products and those of allied verticals (i.e.) industries that are driven/will be driven by technology, e.g. financial services (mobile money),
agriculture, health, transportation, etc.) The main elements of the disruption range from Web Access (Mobile Broadband vs Wi-Fi), to Mobile-to-Mobile (M2M) services vs Internet of Things
(IoT), cloud computing, OTT services to big data management and generational change in network delivery capacity from 1G to 5G in the last forty years with 6G in the works in the near future”.
Key drivers of emerging technologies identified during the assessment stage included, Cybersecurity, Big Data & Analytics, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Cloud Computing, IoT & M2M, Network Functions Visualization (NFV), Nextgen Mobile Networks (5G).
“Main issues arising from this are:
– How does NCC regulate Emerging Technologies? How does NCC cope with challenges of regulating Emerging Technologies in the face of cybersecurity and privacy issues, fast pace of changing technologies and disruption of business models?
There were some suggested principles of regulating Emerging Technologies that should inform the new SMP. These include: An Adaptive Regulation Model, a shift from ‘regulate and forget’ to a responsive approach Regulatory Sandboxes, prototype and test new approaches by creating sandboxes and accelerators Collaborative Regulation Streamline Regulation, nationally by engaging a broader set of players across the ecosystemRisk Weighted Regulation, a shift from one size fits all approach to segmented data driven approach”.
