…And 7 Infrastructure Companies to be licensed also

By The Citizen

The Nigerian Communications Commission told a stakeholder Forum in Lagos earlier today that it proposed to license one infrastructure company for each of the six zones and one for Lagos.

This, the Commission said, is a fall out of its adoption of a Nigerian Model of Open Access regime to manage service delivery in the emerging broadband environment.

Dr Eugene Juwah who presented the new simplistic industry structure on which the model will run said the Commission would manage the landscape to offer nationwide fibre penetration, available on a non-discriminatory basis and complete with a strategy to ensure cooperation of existing operators.

He said the Commission is retiring the current industry structure in which integrated operators offer end-to-end services and long distance operators offer wholesale services a model which has proved to face severe limitation in terms of increasing availability and penetration of high speed broadband infrastructure and services.

The Consultation paper with which the Commission asked for stakeholder input appears long in coming and in a hurry to go.