The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) hosted the Secretary General of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), Houlli Zhao in Abuja, where issues concerning ICT were deeply discussed.
The maiden visit of Zhao to the industry regulator’s Corporate Office was an eye opening to stakeholders who were present, on the grounds that ICT business in Nigeria is profitable.
The ITU Secretary Genera described Nigeria as a country with one of the most active ICT development companies with a big population.
He said ICT business in Nigeria could be very profitable but too risky considering the high level of competition from different players in the sector.
“I have heard a lot of good stories about ICT development in Nigeria; I try to come here earlier but unfortunately I couldn’t make it. I met some of your colleagues and companies at Barcelona recently last week.”
He continued: “Nigeria has one of the most active unsupervised ICT development company. One of the examples that I like to share with my friend is that in October 2013, at an international conference to talk about ICT development, at that meeting European Union for ICT in his presentation, said European market has developed and that they are planning for the future and that they have has started using 4G services in Brussels.
“That’s their headquarters but yet they don’t know when they can use 4G in their capitals but here in Africa 4G is already in several capitals. The report I got in there was that Nigeria was already on 4G. So I was very pleased and said I would like to come to the African continent to those with 4G and indeed and truly in 2014 I was in Namibia.
“And I found out that Namibia’s cities are already using 4G but did not have chance to come to Abuja because the reference was to Nigeria in particular. Nigeria has big population with a big population market you have a lot of potentials to help create employment and services and you also have challenges and people like China, India.”
He admitted that though 4G was still underdeveloped, operators cannot be left behind, advising them to keep up with the introduction of newer technology even when they are yet to fully recover their investments in the old technology.
He added, “We know that 4G is still underdeveloped in particular our operators have very tough situations that after 3G you have to invest in 4G, after 4G we are talking about 5G. When the investment on 3G may not be fully recovered then you already have to invest on 4G; when 4G have not been fully put to service you are under pressure to develop 5G.
“Competition among our operators is very tough; his can you get more costumers, how can you get more. Our operators face challenges not only on budgets for investments on new technologies but also face challenges new services like OTTs. Our major investors are ICT companies and our operators.”
In response, the Executive Vice Chairman NCC Umar Danbata said the while the major challenge of the commission is to improve the quality of service.
