The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has revealed that the number of Nigerians living without access to telecom services has plummeted from 37 million in 2013 to 27 million presently. This represents a 27% drop in the 10 years between.
This was revealed by the Executive Vice Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Commission, Prof. Umar Garba Danbatta, during a recent telecoms industry stakeholders forum held in Yenagoa, Bayelsa state. Prof. Danbatta said that this progress was the result of a huge reduction in access gap by the end of 2022.
NCC’s Head of Pre-Licensing, Usman Mamman, who represented Prof. Danbatta at the forum, highlighted the substantial strides made in diminishing the access gap. He said that from a total of 207 clusters of access gaps in 2013, the industry has witnessed an extraordinary reduction to just 97 clusters by the end of 2022, effectively bridging 110 access gaps.
“We have worked tirelessly to ensure we bring telecom services to people living in rural, unserved, and underserved areas of this country, totalling 37 million people courtesy of the consultancy that was conducted in 2013.”
NCC
Access gaps refer to groups of communities or areas scattered throughout the country that have been deprived of access to vital telecom services. The NCC said it has worked tirelessly to rectify this issue, and as a result, successfully reduced the clusters of access gaps by more than half.
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Telecom access to focus on the rural areas
One particular area of focus for the NCC has been the connection of Nigerians living in rural regions. Prof. Danbatta emphasized the Commission’s unwavering dedication to bringing telecom services to those residing in underserved and unserved areas.
He said that the NCC’s efforts have yielded significant results, as the clusters of access gaps were reduced to 114 by 2019 through the deployment of necessary infrastructure, including base transceiver stations.
“By 2019, we had succeeded in reducing the clusters of access gaps to 114 through the deployment of the necessary infrastructure needed to bring services to people living in rural, unserved, and underserved areas of the country. The deployment of infrastructure is in terms of base transceiver stations, which resulted in the reduction of Nigerians in those clusters from 37 million to 31 million in 2019”.
NCC
By 2022, the commission says the access gap clusters were further reduced to a mere 97 from the initial 207 in 2013, bringing the total number of Nigerians without access to telecom services down to 27 million. This remarkable achievement was made possible through the deployment of 79 new base transceiver stations between 2009 and 2011.
Furthermore, Prof. Danbatta announced that additional progress had been made in the telecom sector. From 2013 to 2018, the industry witnessed the deployment of 124 more base transceiver stations, and between 2019 and 2022, 364 stations were added. As a result, the total number of base transceiver stations deployed to date, since the identification of access gaps, stands at a remarkable 567 by the end of 2022.
While recognizing the significant milestone achieved in reducing the access gap, Prof. Danbatta emphasized that the Commission will not rest on its laurels. The NCC remains determined to provide telecom services to the remaining 27 million Nigerians currently without access.
To bridge the remaining 97 access gaps across the country and ensure ubiquitous connectivity in every nook and cranny of Nigeria, the Commission has planned regulatory interventions. These interventions include the issuance of Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) licenses and the deployment of Fifth Generation (5G) networks, among other initiatives.
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