Nigerian telecom regulator, NCC said it has considered it important to review the national Numbering Plan in the spirit of ensuring that the country’s telecom ecosystem is regulated in tandem with the demand of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
NCC’s Executive Vice Chairman, Prof. Umar Danbatta stated this in a remark he made yesterday during the Fourth Edition of the Information Communication Technology & Telecommunications (ICTEL) Exhibition, organized by the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) in Lagos.
In the remark, Danbatta, who was represented by Ismail Adedigba, Head, Information & Reference, Consumer Affairs Bureau at NCC, disclosed that it is taking the decision based on recent developments in the global telecommunications industry such as M2M communications, the IoT, OTT and others, and other services made possible by fourth-generation networks and the futuristic 5G/6G technologies.
“As you may be aware, numbering plan is very key to telecommunications services for proper identification of devices and key services and as such we are reviewing the existing National Numbering Plan (NNP) with the objective of developing a new NNP that is robust, futuristic and adaptable to address the numbering needs of the country taking into account the country’s growing population,” he said.
The Commission believes that new services have emerged in the Nigerian digital space and there is a need to integrate such services into the telecom environment.
Also, people are now interested in having all their communication services as voice, data, short messaging services (SMS), television programmes, banking services conveyed by a single device. Thus, the convergence of services requires upgrading and adopting the numbering plan to accommodate the new habits and culture.
The Commission added that the development of the new NNP, therefore, will help to provide numbers that will satisfy the needs of the projected 500 million Nigerians to be connected and about 1 billion globally-interconnected machines and devices by 2050; promote efficiency in the allocation of this scarce national resource; promote competition among service providers; eliminate the risk of running short of all categories of numbers; facilitate the introduction and development of new and innovative services and above all, encourage growth of the telecommunications sector, increase job creation and contribute to National Gross Domestic Product (GDP), among others.