The Executive Vice Chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Prof. Umar Danbatta has assured stakeholders that the huge bandwidth capacity from the Equiano subsea cable that was launched last week in Lagos will be transmitted across Nigeria.
The NCC Boss, who gave the assurance at the commissioning of the Google-owned Equiano Subsea Cable, noted that transmitting the capacity across the country is in keeping with the provisions of the digital economy policy being implemented by the government in collaboration with all stakeholders.
“We want to assure you of the Commission’s commitment towards ensuring that the huge bandwidth capacity from these cables at the shore in Lagos would be transmitted to a different part of the country to drive robust and ubiquitous infrastructure,” Danbatta, who represented at the event by the Executive Commissioner, Technical Services at NCC, Ubale Maska said.
He believes that Google’s investment in the subsea cable, Equiano, will be significant in driving NCC’s ongoing implementation of the Nigerian National Broadband Plan (NNBP) 2020-2025, which aims at increasing broadband penetration to 70 percent by 2025.
“We are hopeful that Equiano, together with earlier undersea cables in the country, will have additional landing points in the hinterlands through collaborative efforts with NCC-licensed Infrastructure Companies (InfraCos).
“This will help to reduce retail data prices significantly and thereby complementing the Commission’s efforts at ensuring that affordable Internet services are available to boost Commission’s ongoing broadband policy initiatives”. Danbatta stated and thereby helped to reiterate the objective linkages of policies and plans in the telecom ecosystem, and the national economic strategies,” he added.
The new cable system is named after a Nigerian hero, Olaudah Equiano, who survived enslavement in the 18th century and went on to become a famous writer and anti-slavery activist. Besides, the triumph over challenges, which Equiano’s life symbolised, the landing of the cable in Nigeria is expected to underscore Nigeria’s leadership as a regional hub for connectivity, and thus, set to attract cloud operators, content providers, content distribution networks and their associated ecosystems.
It is joining the league of other subsea cables such as SAT3 cable, MainOne cable, Glo1 cable, ACE cable WACS cable, Dolphin by Natcom and MTN that have landed on the shores of Nigeria’s water.
