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Stakeholders Blame Access for Poor Local Content Development

By Chike onwuegbuchi
22 October 2015   |   9:44 pm
STAKEHOLDERS in the country’s information and communications technology space have attributed the poor growth in the local internet content to lack of broadband penetration.
ICT

ICT

STAKEHOLDERS in the country’s information and communications technology space have attributed the poor growth in the local internet content to lack of broadband penetration.

They said that low broadband penetration in the country as well as expensive plans few broadband services providers offered Nigerians make it difficult for content providers to break even thereby discouraging them from developing more content.

Even when content developers put content online the usage is not there, mostly because the few people that have broadband service could not use the services as they are managing their expensive internet plan.

Engr. Sam Adeleke, immediate past chairman, Association of Internet Service Providers Nigeria (ISPAN), explained that internet content cannot grow without the growth of infrastructure which is the provision of affordable broadband service.

According to him, ‘there is no broadband service in the country. Broadband service is when you provide unhindered internet access to subscribers without putting limit to what they can download; the situation where providers offer subscribers 5g or 10g for certain amount is not broadband. This will lock the subscriber up from using internet as he would love to’.

He noted that Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC’s) State Accelerated Broadband Initiative (SABI) project is an initiative that would have given the country the needed infrastructure build up to provide broadband, but wondered what have become of that initiative with the millions spent on it.

He added that government could sponsor service provision in areas regarded as commercially none viable with specifications and design spelt-out if we are to achieve high broadband penetration in the country.

Adeleke however said that local content is growing as we have services such as car directory, hotel listing among others.
Satis Kumar, chief operating officer, Direct On Data, acknowledged that there are local contents on the internet, but access to them possess a big challenge this he attributed to cost of service provisioning on the side of internet service providers. According to him, it cost an average of N10million to deploy service in an area without knowing the number of customers that will subscribe to the service for the operator to break even.

He said that absence of last mile infrastructure has made it difficult for operators to deploy service in commercially none viable areas.

He urged government to look at a way of reducing licensing fees for internet service providers to enable them extend service beyond the few commercially viable cities if access must improve which is needed to encourage developers of local content to experience high usage.

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