Page 137 - SAMENA Trends - November-December 2019

REGULATORY & POLICY UPDATES SAMENA TRENDS

Minister’s order as “dictatorial” and one that had the to the categorization of infrastructure development
potential to discourage investment in the country’s for the country. “We are making a request through
telecoms industry. ALTON’s President Gbenga Adebayo the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy
said that the directive was unrealistic and insensitive. for a consideration for this deployment because it is
He added that Minister Pantami had failed to consider going to entail a counterpart funding. The project is
operating costs that are incurred by telcos and that it a Public Private Partnership Project (PPP). Therefore,
was unrealistic for the nation’s government to expect a the commission is poised to seek counterpart funding.
cost decrease in data within five days. The NCC has not “The important thing about this project is that there
issued a new directive to operators but informed the will be a point of access in every local government area
Minister of actions it is taking to protect the consumers in the country, So, all the 774 local governments will
against practices such as forceful subscriptions and have a point of broadband access of 10 Gigabyte per
automatic renewals of data and value-added services. second capacity”, the NCC boss told the committee.
At a recent meeting with the Minister, leaders of the NCC Dambata, while speaking on the quality of services of
outlined the challenges facing local telcos including the telecommunication operators in Nigeria, assured
vandalism, site access denial and fire cuts. the committee that the NCC was alive to its duties
(December 6, 2019) balancingact-africa.com in monitoring the service output of the operators to
ensure that Nigerians were not shortchanged by the
The Executive Vice Chairman (EVC) of the Nigeria operators. He told the committee that the NCC has
Communications Commission (NCC), Professor an established “key performance indicators” that was
Umaru Dambata has assured Nigerians that the the threshold of the service delivery of the service
Commission was poised to deploy digital broadband providers and that the commission ensures that the
communication technology to all the 774 local performance indicators were strictly adhered to by
government areas in the country, to enhance quality the operators. “On the Quality of service, we monitor
of telecommunication services. Dambata made the this mostly; we have information about the quality
disclosure on Tuesday at the National Assembly, of service in virtually all parts of the Country, all the
when he led the management of the NCC to defend the states and in all the local governments. And we have
Commission’s 2020 budget proposal before the joint key performance indicators; we are able to measure
Committees on Communications of the Senate and the quality of service that is provided by the telecom
House of Representatives. During his presentation, operators. Where we find the quality of service poor
Prof. Dambata also disclosed that the Commission and below the standard stipulated, we normally insist
had developed a strategic fiber optic deployment that measures must be taken to improve the quality of
map that will cover all the geopolitical zones in the service and we do this every month,” Dambata added.
country for the smooth operations of the telecom He said the Commission would need the support of the
operators to enhance quality of service across board. National Assembly to ensure the rate of N145 per linear
“We are planning to deploy fiber optic cables in all the meter of fiber cable is respected and adhered to by all
geopolitical zones in the country, including Lagos. states and local government areas in the country. This,
Lagos has been designated as a zone on its own the NCC boss said, will greatly assist the Commission
because of the commercial and strategic importance of in its quest to deploy more infrastructures.
Lagos. So Lagos has been made the 7th zone according (November 6, 2019) dailypost.ng

Norway’s National Communications Authority surplus demand, it may be necessary to set frequency
(Nasjonal kommunikasjonsmyndighet, Nkom) has caps on the allocation, while it suggested it may look to
reportedly received an application for spectrum in the take into account the position of spectrum held in the
3400MHz-3800MHz band for use on the archipelago 3400MHz-3800MHz band by existing holders on the
of Svalbard. As a result, the regulator has called for mainland during the allocation process.
Norway any other parties interested in these frequencies to file (December 20, 2019) commsupdate.com
an application by 24 January 2020. With frequencies
in the band in question having already been allocated The Norwegian government has presented a bill to
on the Norwegian mainland until 31 December 2022, parliament which aims to facilitate the development of
Nkom noted that in Svalbard the entire frequency range high speed broadband networks and implement the EU’s
is available, having been used for, among other things, Broadband Development Directive (although Norway is
non-commercial testing of 5G. It is proposing to issue not part of the EU). The legislation looks to make the
the spectrum to successful bidders at no cost, with deployment of infrastructure faster and cheaper by
any allocations to be valid until 31 December 2022. encouraging cooperation in construction efforts and
In addition, the regulator has said that in the event of promoting joint utilization of existing networks. The law

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