The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has beckoned on states governments in the country to adhere to the agreed Federal Government's recommendations, especially as related to Right of Way (RoW) charges in the enthronement of a broadband regime.
NCC said this has become highly essential if broadband must become pervasive and ubiquitous in Nigeria.
The Federal Government had recommended N145/meter for RoW, but painfully, the states, which also agreed to the charges at previous meetings, deviated from the plan. They now charge as much as between N1, 500 and N6, 000 per meter.
Investigations by The Guardian showed that this has made it difficult for operators, especially the Infrastructure Companies (InfraCo) to roll out services.
For instance, MainOne and IHS, which both got their licensees as far back as 2015, are having serious difficulties in rolling out.
While MainOne is facing roll out challenges in Lagos, IHS, which got the North Central InfraCo license has returned it to the NCC as a result of the several challenges it encountered from states in the region.
As such, NCC said if these roll-out challenges persist, enthroning a knowledge-base economy in Nigeria may be difficult.
Speaking in Lagos, yesterday at a broadband stakeholders' workshop organized by NCC, the Commission's Head, Technical Standards and Network Integrity, Bako Wakil, said broadband is critical to each economy, saying "it has become necessary to make it available and accessible in Nigeria if we must be competitive."
At the forum, which had representatives from states, Wakil noted that NCC had to bring the stakeholders, especially the state authorities to the meeting because of their importance to broadband deployment in the country.
According to him, operators need the support and understanding of the various states governments to deploy broadband efficiently in the country.
Listing the challenges facing deployment to include high RoW; multiple taxation/regulation; delays in obtaining site acquisition permits; vandalism, among others, the NCC Chief, revealed that a new National Broadband Plan (NBP) is on the way, which is being handled by the Ministry of Communication.