Danbatta: It’s Illegal to Sell Pre-registered SIM Cards
Executive Vice Chairman, Nigerian Communications Commission, Professor Umar Garba Danbatta, warns against the sale of pre-registered SIM cards, saying it is unlawful and undermines national security. He also talks about the pros and cons of the Over the T
How will you access broadband penetration in the country?
On the assumption of office in 2015, we unveiled the 8-point agenda for the telecoms industry, among which is the broadband plan. We are key at driving broadband penetration in the country. Before we came on board in 2015, there was a Presidential Broadband Committee set up by the federal government and the committee was jointly chaired by the former Executive Vice Chairman of NCC, Dr. Earnest Ndukwe and the chairman of Zenith Bank, Mr. Jim Ovia. The committee did a good job in coming up with a detailed five- year National Broadband Plan (NBP) from 2013-2018. On page nine of the NBP, it stated that broadband penetration, as at 2012, was between four and six per cent and there were measures through which broadband penetration could be achieved. Achievement of broadband penetration is not the responsibility of NCC alone, but a combined responsibility of NITDA, NigComSat, Galaxy Backbone, including critical stakeholders like telecommunications operators. NCC and other agencies of government were given their roles to play in other to achieve faster broadband penetration. The NBP stated that the country must achieve five-fold in broadband penetration, but this of course depends on the minimum and maximum thresh hold.
By multiplying four per cent minimum level of broadband by five, which represents the five years broadband plan, it will give 20 per cent minimum broadband target and by multiplying six per cent maximum broadband penetration as at 2012 by the five years broadband plan, it will give 30 per cent broadband penetration, which is maximum target at the end of 2018.
But Nigeria had in 2017, surpassed the minimum target of 20 per cent, working towards achieving the maximum target of 30 per cent by the end of 2018. This is according to the NBP. As of today, Nigeria has achieved 22 per cent broadband penetration, and it is close to achieving the 30 per cent target.
The achievement in broadband penetration, gave rise to the first phase licencing of Infrastructure Companies (InfraCos) to drive broadband infrastructure deployment that will enable broadband penetration.
The licence was planned to cover six geopolitical zones of the country, as well as Lagos that was mapped out as a zone for the purpose. MainOne was licenced to cover Lagos Zone, iConnect, a subsidiary of IHS was granted licence to cover the north-central zone. These two zones were licenced before I came on board as NCC’s EVC, and it was during my tenure that we licenced additional five zones. They included north-west, north-east, south-west, south-east and south-south.
The beauty of the licence is that it is cheap because the NCC is not keen at making so much money in licences.
The NBP specified the roles of government agencies in achieving 30 per cent broadband penetration by the end of 2018. To what extent have they been able to achieve their specific roles?
Yes, all government agencies that are drafted to drive the broadband policy, were given specific roles but I cannot speak for them on the extent to which they have accomplished their roles. However, I know that they are all party to the implementation of the broadband penetration. The National Information Technology Development Agency of Nigeria (NITDA), for instance, has the responsibility to drive capacity building, but NCC is the arrowhead among all other government agencies in driving broadband penetration and we have done so well to achieve over 70 out of the total 30 per cent maximum broadband target for Nigeria.
What are some of the challenges of broadband penetration?
There are national and regional challenges to broadband penetration. In these two broad areas of challenges, there are backbone infrastructure challenges as well as challenges of broadband access in underserved and unserved areas of the country.
In the area of access, we have about 200 access gaps but through the effort of NCC, we have been able to reduce them to about 190 as of today.
Nigerians living within the current 190 access gap areas, are not experiencing telecommunications services and this is a challenge we need to address as a country.
To address the challenges, there is need for capacity building to leverage ICT to do greater things and in better ways. So, we need to sensitise the people and empower them with ICT tools that will make them achieve their dreams. NCC for instance, is pioneering the Advanced Digital Acquisition Programme for tertiary institutions, where we have the highest concentration of talented youths. By the time they acquire the skills, they will be able to develop ICT Applications. NITDA is also involved in ICT training and skills acquisition through its sponsored scholarship programme for students studying ICT related courses, up to doctorate level.
Interconnectivity is still a major issue in broadband deployment, what is NCC doing about it?
The advisory committee set up by government to increase broadband access in the country is on course. The committee made up of four licencees of the NCC, namely IHS, MainOne, Phase3 Telecom and Broadbased Telecom, and supervised by Acting President Yemi Osinbajo, has deployed fibre cable in the country and the committee is planning to lay additional 18,000km fibre infrastructure to complement the already 40,000km on ground. This will further complement the 120,000km of fibre optic cable that the country needs to ensure maximum broadband connectivity, that will address the country’s challenges of intra and inter broadband connectivity. Our plan is to make Nigeria a fibre connected nation across all its 774 local government areas. Every local government area in the country deserves to have broadband connectivity and this can be achieved through additional deployment of broadband infrastructure. So, we need targeted deployment across the country.
What is NCC doing about consumer protection and empowerment?
We have great plans for consumer empowerment, hence its part of our 8-point Agenda. We went ahead to declare 2017 as the year of the consumer, because everybody in the country is consumer of telecommunication services, including myself. Nigerians welcomed the initiative and majority were able to activate the 2442 short code for Do Not Disturb (DND) initiative, designed to protect the consumers from unsolicited text messages, which was becoming an issue in the telecoms industry. From a little above one million activated DND, it has gone beyond 10 million since 2017. With the activation of the DND short code, Nigerian consumers have powers in their hands to receive or reject messages. They can now reject messages they do not want and accept messages that they want. The number of complains from subscribers have reduced because the NCC is responding fast to consumers’ concerns. Beyond that, NCC still engage consumers through the NCC organised consumer parliament and town hall meetings.
Delay in the approval of Right of Way by state governments had always been an issue to contend with by telecoms operators who are eager to roll out telecoms services. What is NCC doing about this?
The NCC is in a conscious engagement with critical industry stakeholders on Right of Way (RoW) issue. I mean critical industry stakeholders like the National Economic Council, under the chairmanship of the vice president of the country, as well as the Nigerian government. I had in the past made presentations to the Nigerian Governor’s Forum, while engaging them on the issues of RoW. The National Economic Council (NEC) had also discussed the issue and came up with a report on harmonised price of N145 per metre length in the laying of fibre optic cable for broadband deployment. No state and no local government is adhering to the NEC report on the harmonised RoW rate, and this is a serious challenge to industry growth and expansion, because state government, federal government and their agencies are imposing high and arbitrary charges on RoW. Even at that, the NCC did not give up the struggle. At the last National Economic Council meeting, there was a very important resolution that came out of the meeting. The resolution was that the harmonised RoW rate of N145 per metre length of fibre cable must be charged as against the current high and arbitrary charges on RoW. This is a major achievement by the NCC, but we still have challenges of fibre cut during road constructions in most states and local governments. Again, we are engaging the states and local governments on the need to protect telecoms infrastructure during road constructions. We need a national telecoms infrastructure bill that will protect telecoms infrastructure across the country.
The NCC recently signed an MoU with the National Lottery Commission. What value will that bring to Nigeria?
It will definitely bring a lot of value to the country because lottery is an additional service that adds additional burden to telecoms networks. Lotteries are electronically driven and rides on the network of telecoms operators, through mobile services.
The Nigeria Labour Congress recently accused NCC of sabotaging its efforts in protecting the rights of workers, by giving tacit support to MTN. How true is this?
Our duty as telecoms regulator is to protect jobs in the telecoms sector and we jointly demonstrated that with the Central Bank of Nigeria, the financial regulator, in the case of 9mobile, when the banks were threatening to takeover 9mobile because of its indebtedness to 13 local banks to the tune of $1.2 billion.
In the case of the NLC accusing us of aligning with MTN to short-change the country, it is not true. The NCC has not aligned with MTN in any way to short-change the country. We have a duty to protect telecommunications investment and telecommunications jobs in the country and we are already engaging the NLC on this. NCC will not in anyway stop Nigerian workers from belonging to workers’ union.
We noticed some delays in the conclusion of the sale of 9mobile, and the possible handover of the telecoms company to the preferred bidder. What could be responsible for this delay?
The delay in the conclusion of the sales of 9mobile, and the possible handover of the telecoms company to Teleology Holdings Limited, the preferred bidder, could be attributed to several factors. First is about the accumulated debts owed by 9mobile, which must be cleared before handing it over to the preferred bidder.