NCC board approves two new infraco licences for South East & North East

As part of fresh drive to deepen broadband penetration in Nigeria, the Board of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) recently approved two additional Infrastructure Company (Infraco) Licencees.

The two new Infraco licencees are Zinox Technology Limited for South East and Brinks Integrated Solutions Limited for North East.

A statement signed by the Commission’s Director of Public Affairs, Mr. Tony Ojobo said “With this approval, the number of Infracos licenced so far is now four, remaining the last three”.

Though the Commission did not give any detail on when the remaining three (South South, North West and South West) will be named, it would be recalled that over a year ago, MainOne Cable Company Limited, had been licenced to provide services in Lagos while IHS got its licence to cover the North Central geopolitical zone including Abuja.

The Infraco licences are based on the NCC’s Open Access Model (OAM) in line with the National Broadband Plan (NBP) of (2013 – 2018).

By provisions of the NBP, Nigeria is expected to attain 30 percent broadband penetration by 2018.

Besides, as part of the initiative to achieve this, NCC, as the driver of this process, has so far licenced a number of companies to stimulate broadband penetration.

These include Bitflux Communications Limited (Bitflux) for 2.3 Ghz and MTN Nigeria for the 2.6 Ghz licences. Other licences are in the pipeline in this process. As at December, 2017, Nigeria had attained 22% broadband penetration.

With the licensing of four Infracos: MainOne Cable, IHS, Zinox Technology and Brinks Solutions, there are three more licencees waiting for approval to bring total number to seven.