Stakeholders seek government intervention on bandwidth issues

Worried by barrage of problems militating against provision of broadband internet in the country especially on transmission link, stakeholders in the ecosystem have urged the federal government as a matter of urgency to intervene by addressing the challenges.

Mohammed Rudman, managing director, Internet Exchange Point of Nigeria (IXPN), said that broadband internet is critical to development as it aids education, health care as well as businesses to thrive and therefore required the necessary attention by government to ensure that all bottleneck to Nigerians enjoying broadband internet are removed.

He decried high cost of bandwidth at cities outside of Lagos which he attributed to over reliance by GSM operators on the use of radio links which are powered by intermediary devices that are affected by electricity.

“Stakeholders have been talking on these challenges in the provision of broadband internet for several years now, there is need to find lasting solution to the problem. Sharing of infrastructure has become a problem for operators especially on the national fibre link space. There is no reason for all the GSM operators to lay different fibre link across the country where they could share with the operator that first laid instead of wasting human are material resources duplicating what is already in existent,” he said.

Agreeing with Rudman, Dewole Ajao, operations manager, Bandwidth Consortium, said that the various national links are underutilized and that their owners are spending money maintaining them, which according to him is responsible for high cost been charged by them.

“An important step is for Nigerian government agencies to stop sending all that money to foreign countries in the name of buying satellite bandwidth. If we use that money to buy terrestrial bandwidth, local providers will receive more business and they can strengthen their operations.” He noted.

He attributed the use of satellite bandwidth by federal government agencies through Galaxy Backbone as part of the reasons why government is reluctant to intervene to find lasting solution to problem of national fibre link infrastructure in the country required for broadband internet.