Nigeria's telecoms sector regulator the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) plans to provide access to telecommunications to 40 million more citizens in 2017, specifically those who reside in areas that do not have access.

NCC Executive Vice Chairman of the commission, Prof. Umar Danbatta, said that the process will involve 207 communities.

Danbatta also bemoaned the below average nature of telecoms services in Nigeria which he said is due to the neglect of fixed telecommunications services which placed pressure on mobile operators.

In order to address the issue, plans are in place to license additional band spectrums.

"To reduce pressure on the existing lower microwave frequency bands and increase broadband access across the country, NCC is planning to license the 38GHz and 42GHz bands, both bands are suitable for short hop and point-to-point terrestrial links. The bands also support 3G/4G/LTE backhaul and a high degree of frequency reuse due to the high directivity of their antennas," Danbatta said.

"Currently in Nigeria, more than 10 terabytes of telecommunications capacity exists at the landing point, but the challenge is the deployment of fibre infrastructure across the country that will effectively distribute this capacity to the distribution nodes at the metropolitan areas of all regions in the country that will supply sufficient fibre capacity to the backbone," he explained.

Broadband penetration

In line with the country's broadband agenda, the NCC head said the commission is discussing broadband rollout plans across several regions of the country with selected companies.

"The commission is finalising subsidy agreements with two infrastructure companies, Infraco Nigeria Limited and I-Connect Infrastructure Services Limited, for the Lagos and North Central zones, respectively to facilitate the rollout of broadband services. The remaining five zones, North-East, North-West, South-East, South-South and South-West, are in the pipeline. The subsidy agreement is a Public-Private Partnership scheme in the provision of price regulated broadband services in Nigeria," he said.