ICT sector in 2017: Data tariff increase, spectrum sale, ICT varsity

By Adedeji Adeyemi Fakorede

The Federal Government’s plan to establish an Information Communication Technology (ICT) University in the first quarter or second quarter of this year is probably the biggest ICT event that Nigerians will be interested in as the days roll by.

The Minister of Communications, Adebayo Shittu,  disclosed this in Abuja at a Forum that the federal government would establish the university to close the ICT skill gap in the country.

Barr Shittu said establishing the university would also give Nigeria a lot of foreign exchange.

“By the grace of God, in the next three to six months, we should have established in Nigeria an ICT university which will be first of its kind in Africa.

“This is with the sole purpose of providing training environment and training facilities to make the industry have enough skilled manpower in various sub sectors of the ICT sector.

“I am happy to say that we already have what is called the Digital Bridge Institute which is for short term training programmes in six locations across the country and we hope to transform this institute into the ICT University of Nigeria.

“I am already talking to a lot of operators at the international level, Facebook, Motorola, Ericson, all of them. We are encouraging them to come and adopt the university campuses as their own.

“They can bring in money and bring in faculties and a lot of logistics to assist in training Nigerians and we can now export these trained skilled facilitators to African countries to work.’’

 “And all of these have already given us support, so we think that within the first quarter of the year, the implementation committee will be set up with a view to putting things in proper place for the eventual take off,” he said.

Another major event that will shape the ICT and telecoms sector this year is the increase in data tariff. Though the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) had asked the big telecoms operators to suspend the planned increase in data tariffs scheduled to take effect from December 1, 2016, the Commission still has the plan to increase the tariff.

The NCC and telecoms operators had said the current data price regime in the country’s telecoms sector was unsustainable.

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They said the present economic challenges characterised by the steep depreciation of the naira had compounded their woes and made data hike imperative. So, Nigerian telecom consumers should rather brace up for increase in data price in 2017.

Investigation by National Daily revealed that not only data tariff, call tariff may also take an upward movement this year.

Though the rising cost of doing business over the years has not forced the telcos to jerk up their call tariffs, feelers from the industry suggest the operators will make increase in cost of making calls this year.

According to the latest industry report for the sector, the annualized average cost per minute of a voice call during call traffic peak periods, across all the major telephony operators in the country has slumped by 67.26 per cent between 2007 and this year, 2016.

The report by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) indicates that the average cost of calls made to a number within the same network (On-Net) and a number on another network (Off-Net) stand at N12.01k and N12.64 respectively. These are likely to go up.

Telcos are saying the effect of the reduced call rate tariff has reflected on the income Mobile Number Operators (MNOs) in the country, and that they are not making much profit as operating cost keeps skyrocketing. This is evident in the falling Average Revenue Per User (ARPU), which recently dropped further from $6 to $4 monthly.

Broadband penetration which currently stands at 20.95% may likely hit 25% this year according to NCC projection. Spectrum sale, license of Infrastructural Companies (Infracos) and launch of 4G by more telcos would likely make this happen.

Number of Nigerians with access to broadband may climb above 30million this year.

Nigeria may likely meet the June deadline for Digital Switch Over. The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) had given Nigeria up to June to switch from analogue broadcasting to digital to free up some spectrum for use in the telecoms industry.

Also happening this year is the establishment of NIPOST’s agency banking in the rural areas.

The Post Master General (PMG) of the Nigerian Postal Service, Barrister Bisi Adegbuyi, had said establishment of Post Bank is not feasible in the country but the Postal Service would establish agency banking.

 “We don’t need Post Bank. What we are likely to do here in Nigeria, having looked into our peculiarities and circumstances, is to go into agency banking”, the NIPOST PMG said.

The MOU signed last month by Galaxy Backbone and the Nigeria Communications Satellite Limited (NIGCOMSAT) to improve efficiency, reduce cost and avoid duplication in the provision of connectivity services to government MDAs will also be implemented this year.

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Under the terms of the partnership, Galaxy will be responsible for all terrestrial and last mile connectivity services to the MDAs. Whilst still responsible for its hub operations, Galaxy will also purchase all its required satellite space segment bandwidth from NigComSat on agreed payment terms.