The Minister of Communications and Digital Economy has inaugurated the Steering and Implementation Committee for the National Broadband Policy to drive the digital economy policy of the current administration.
The Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Dr Isa Ibrahim Pantami, who inaugurated the Committee in his office in Abuja, said committee is charged to deliver on the agenda of achieving for Nigeria 70 percent broadband penetration by the year 2025.
work had already started on the National Broadband Plan as the country has attained 40.18 percent broadband penetration as of today.
He said the Committee headed by Engineer Ubale Maska, Executive Commissioner, Technical Services of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has the responsibility of engaging critical stakeholders within the nation’s telecom ecosystem to ensure the smooth implementation of the policy documents of the National Broadband Policy.
Pantami said: “This Committee has the mandate to ensure that 90 percent of Nigeria population has access to broadband, while it is also expected that the country achieve 70 percent broadband penetration by year 2025. The increase in broadband will also bring about increase in the Gross Domestic Products (GDP) of the country. So our economic will grow by either 7 percent increase in GDP or 10 percent.
“The time we started this, the broadband penetration was 31 percent but based on the report released by the NCC just last week, the broadband penetration now is 40.18 percent. Within that period, we achieved almost 10 percent of broaband penetration in less than a year.
“The new broadband plan was designed to deliver data download speeds across Nigeria of a minimum of 25Mbps in urban areas, and 10 Mbps in rural areas with effective coverage available to at least 90 percent of the population by 2025 at a price not more than 390 naira per 1GB of data ( ie 2 percent of median income or 1 percent of minimum wage)”