The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), yesterday admitted that the $68billion investment in Nigeria is huge, but it is by no means adequate for one of the fastest growing telecommunications markets in the world.
The Executive Vice Chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Prof. Umar Danbatta, admitted this yesterday in a presentation he made at the 2019 Telecom Executives and Regulator Forum, organized by the Association of Telecommunications Companies of Nigeria (ATCON), at the Oriental Hotel in Lagos.
In the presentation made on behalf of Danbatta by Mohammed Babajika, Director, Policy Competition and Economic Analysis at NCC, the Nigerian telecom regulator, noted that about 40million Nigerians are yet to be reached with basic infrastructure and services, making the $68 billion investment in the telecom industry inadequate.
“The capital intensity of the industry, the need for service providers to increase their infrastructure deployment to satisfy the ever-increasing demand, create room for double the size of this $68billion investment in the next ten years,” it admitted.
The EVC said the desire for investment in the sector will continue to grow as the size of the network increases, revealing that the NCC roadmap for broadband has created new frontiers for investment.
The Nigerian telecom market investment scorecard shows that in 2000, there were 450, 000 connected lines with investment of $60million; in 2014, the country recorded 151 million connected lines with investment of $32billion.
Last year, Nigeria’s connected lines were 172 million with an investment of $68Billion. The enablers of these investments, according to the NCC, are effective regulation, government support, enabling environment, consumer/investor symbiosis and economic stability.