By Chima Akwaja, Leadership.ng
The National Broadband Council chaired by the minister of communications technology, Dr Omobola Johnson, have okayed the building of fibre optic cable landing points in four coastal states to ensure widespread diffusion of high capacity internet bandwidths around the country to be financed by the Universal Service Provision Fund (USPF). Apart from Lagos State, which houses international submarine optic cables from Main One Cable Company, MTN’s West Africa Cable System (WACS), SAT 3 from the NITEL and Globacom’s Glo 1 cable, government plans to encourage telecommunication operators to establish cable landing points in Rivers, Bayelsa, Cross River and Ondo States. According to Johnson, cable landing points will promote the rapid establishment of recovery and restoration agreements among the cable companies and delivery of additional landing points for national security and resilience purposes. “Additional landing points in the country would not only reduce vulnerability and risks associated with a single point of failure but would make it faster and cheaper to lay terrestrial cable from these points to other parts of the country. The council called on the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) and the USPF to look into the possibility of providing financial incentives to accelerate this,” she said.
