Delivering on the National Broadband Plan by 2025

Broadband has long been seen as an enabler of new business processes and product innovation that can boost job creation and raise economic growth and productivity.

According to the ITU, a 10% increase in mobile broadband penetration in Africa would lead to a 2.5% increase in GDP per capita.

And while Covid-19 has increased the pace at which organisations and countries digitalize, there are still many obstacles in the way of reaching pervasive broadband on the African continent.

Nigeria has the largest number of internet users on the continent, sitting at 104.4 million users in January 2021 according to Datareportal, bringing internet penetration to 50%, but local operators still face several challenges in broadband rollout.

These include prohibitive right of way charges for fiber deployment in parts of the country, unreliable power supply and the cost of running diesel generators to power sites, multiple taxation by national and sub-national governments and insecurity in many parts of the country.

Last year, the Minister for Communication and Digital Economy, Dr Isa Ali Pantami, launched Nigeria’s 2020-2025 National Broadband Plan, an ambitious plan to deliver data download speeds of a minimum of 25Mbps in urban areas and 10Mbps in rural areas. As part of the plan at least 90% of the population will have coverage by 2025 at no more than N390 per 1GB of data.

The policy is expected to eliminate some of the impediments identified to broadband penetration. Nokia believes the increase in broadband will have a positive impact on Nigeria’s economy, especially as broadband enables digital transformation of business operations, which, in turn will bring operational efficiency and release value to businesses.

While this is a step in the right direction, it means that network operators must also consider various options in their network rollout strategies to enable them to roll out infrastructure within the timelines of the policy.

Nigeria can encourage the proliferation of network boosting initiatives to enhance coverage, capacity and ultimately improved end-user voice and data experience for telecoms subscribers.

Solutions like massive MIMO based on Active Antenna, for example, will help boost network coverage and capacity, while ensuring OPEX is also minimized as space and power will be effectively reduced by these advanced site solutions. This will be a win-win situation as telcos will experience increased revenue while delivering high quality of service (QoS) to their end users.

Nokia believes that network sharing could be an option for mobile operators as they continue to face pressure to cut the cost per bit of delivering mobile data and improve their own operational efficiencies, while reducing the cost of delivering mobile broadband.

Where it is not deemed anti-competitive in the local market, it enables operators to opt to co-operate and share network resources.

This is often done by setting up a separate joint venture entity to allow rivals to work together, or it can be managed by bringing in a neutral third party to deploy and operate the shared network in a managed services deal.

There are three different sharing models available to network operators. Passive sharing is the sharing of physical sites and passive elements such as towers and power supplies. Active Radio Access Network (RAN) sharing takes it a step further, requiring joint decision-making on investments and operations, while roaming-based sharing sees the customers of one operator seamlessly roam in a host operator’s network to plug gaps in coverage.

Due to the harsh competitive nature of the telecommunications industry, maintaining and operating a shared network can be a sensitive area for operators.

This can be overcome through a managed services approach to reduce friction and ensure that commercially sensitive data does not need to be shared.

Nokia has a proven history of providing solutions for greenfield sharing and outsourcing for sharing established networks providing governance and operational models to suit all the outlined scenarios.

Combining shared networks with managed services gives operators the best chance of realizing the maximum benefits possible.

As a leading managed services provider Nokia uses standardization, automation, and a proven operations model to deliver best-in-class services. A managed services approach will also reduce costs by outsourcing some operations, enabling the operators to exploit economies of scale that few operators could otherwise achieve.

Eniola Campbell is Country Senior Officer and CBT Head for Nigeria at Nokia