Tomorrow, Monday, January 1, 2018, marks the beginning of a new year. A brand new year presents a new opportunity to review past strategies and come up with new ones.
A number of us may have taken the time to draw up a list of goals for the coming year better known as New Year resolutions. I know as a matter of fact that organisations also get to perform new year related planning and activities in preparation for what is ahead.
Looking into the New Year and beyond, I am of the opinion that Information and Communications Technology holds the key to a more secure future for a country that depends 90 per cent on a commodity (crude oil) that is highly threatened and it appears many of our leaders simply don’t get it.
Ladies and gentlemen, it is fully evident that innovators like Elon Musk don’t give a hoot about what we think but continue to make progress with inventions that will disrupt us completely, if we do nothing. This is the time to wake up as a nation!
Today’s piece is focused on what I believe should be some of the key ICT priorities for 2018 and I believe we should treat them with utmost importance.
Getting serious with the National Broadband Plan
The 2013-2018 National Broadband Plan was an attempt to introduce new initiatives to address the importance of broadband towards attaining the country’s developmental goal – Vision 20:2020 – and increase fixed broadband penetration to 30 per cent by 2018.
This will no doubt improve and increase access to faster and cheaper data for the use of the populace as well as increase the GDP of the country as people will be able to do more for less.
In this regard, it is necessary for the relevant federal and state government authorities that are concerned at seeing this come to fruition to come together and agree on issues that are currently hindering the realisation of this.
Such issues include resolution of multiple taxation, reduction in high cost of right of way, and elimination of disturbance by local miscreants so that Telcos and Infracos can concentrate on building necessary infrastructure without hiderance. With increase in accessibility to broadband, businesses will grow and government will earn and collect more revenues in taxes.
A statement released by the Broadband Coalition stated that Nigeria had slided on the broadband adoption and Internet use index: Affordability Drivers Index, ranking 13th place (out of 58 countries surveyed) from 12th place ranking Nigeria earned in the 2015-16 Index in the Alliance for Affordable Internet (A4aI) 2017 report.
The group expressed concern at this decline, reiterating the fact that every 10 — Finish Reading on the Punch
