Prof. Umar Danbatta, Executive Vice Chairman, Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), has said that broadband penetration made remarkable improvement as it increased to about 33 per cent as at February.
Danbatta made this disclosure when Airtel Management visited the commission headquarters in Abuja.
“We have seen remarkable improvement in broadband penetration, the figure is about 33 per cent, we can attribute the progress to very ambitious expansion of network operators like Airtel and other network providers.
“We hit 30.9 per cent at the end of 2018; and we were supposed to hit 30 per cent by December 2018, so we have exceeded the expectation of Nigerians courtesy of the National Broadband plan.
“We are steadily seeing an increase in the penetration as at February we are almost at 33 per cent.
“Therefore, there is a new target, no official statement yet, but we are hearing from stakeholders that it is possible to hit 70 per cent maybe in the next 5 years.”
“No official statement has been made by the supervising Minister, who is the custodian of the National Broadband Plan.
4G growth
The NCC boss also said that the country was witnessing steady increase in data usage using the 4G.“One important information we will want the media to communicate to the people is that henceforth, whatever penetration level we give in percentage terms will be in reference to the existing Nigeria populations of over 190 million plus estimated.
“This is courtesy of the figure given by the National Population Commission that the figure of 140 million that we have been using was no more relevant,” he said.