Bridging the Nigerian Broadband Divide

1. Bridging the Nigerian Broadband Divide By Engr Lanre Ajayi President Nigeria Internet Group

2. Agenda • The African fore bearers • Leapfrogging with broadband • The challenges • The opportunities • Recommendations • Conclusion

3. Broadband Internet in perspective • Dynamic definition • Internet access at a download speed in excess of 1 Mbps

4. African broadband density-The broadband divide • Less than 1% • Compared to 30% in the developed world

5. African fore bearers • Africans fore bearers were known to have very rich history • Good knowledge in traditional medicine • Great in music compositions • Had excellent expertise in arts and craft Yet their descendants (modern day Africans) remain poor

6. Causes of underdevelopment • A major cause of under development of Africa has been attributed to the inability of the fore bearers to pass their experience and knowledge to the next generation to build on • Rather than documenting their experience to pass to the next generation, our fore fathers were busy talking – Folklores, oral traditions etc • Too much talk, too little documentation

7. GSM-an enabler of the talking culture • The GSM is a tool helping the modern day Africans to sustain the talking culture of their fore bearers • Even, today we have very little documentation of the expertise and knowledge gained. • We are still busy talking rather than documenting and sharing experiences-Thanks to the GSM

8. Broadband-an enabler of documentation and Information sharing -catalyst to true development • The broadband offers the greatest opportunity to Africans to start documenting our experience and sharing knowledge within ourselves and from the global community • Information – Our movie, books, music, training materials, journals, can be digitized to make it appear in storage friendly format before transmission on a broadband network

9. Other Applications of broadband • eHealth • eLearning • eGovernment • eCommerce • eEntertainment And lot more..

10. Causes of the broadband divide • Lack of effective IXPs as result of proliferation of VSAT terminals whose hubs are located outside the territories of the IXPs • Lack of enthusiasm to roll out broadband services by the GSM operators as a result of fear that it may wipe out good returns on the voice service • Monopoly on SAT3 cable • Lack adequate national transmission backbone • Unavailability of spectrum for last mile

11. Bridging the broadband divide • Leverage on the latest terrestrial wireless technology to pursue aggressive rollout (WIMAX,EVDO, etc) • Give the necessary incentives to the operators to rollout service (eg Peg the cost of spectrum) • Utilize necessary regulatory instrument to make it unattractive for the GSM operators not to rollout affordable broadband (lower the interconnect rate) • Negotiate with manufacturers the possibility of introduction of affordable terminal devices (manufacture UMPC locally) • Encourage emerging alternatives to SAT3 eg Glo1, Mainstreetcable • Optimise the opportunities presented by NIGOMMSAT, RASCOM and other satellite initiatives • Encourage the rollout of national fiber optics transmission lines to backhaul the traffic from the terrestrial wireless network to the exchange point

12. Future outlook of Nigeria broadband deployment • International backbone infrastructure • National backbone infrastructure • The last mile

13. International backbone infrastructure

14. Nigeria Internet eXchange (NIX)

15. INTERNET TECHNOLOGY

16. THE FUTURE ? ?

17. A typical home or SME???! Standard Internet Services HTTP, FTP, POP, etc

19. Home Videoconference VOIP Voice

20. VOIP Softphones

21. VOIP IP phones

22. Webportal

23. Conclusion The future outlook of broadband infrastructure deployment in Nigeria looks good, if the right environment is created for investment in this area

24. THANK YOU