According to the Executive Vice Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Commission, Prof. Umar Garba Danbatta, the number of areas in Nigeria without telecoms services has been reduced by 53.1% as of the end of 2022.
This reduction is a significant improvement from the 207 clusters of access gaps in 2013, with the industry successfully bridging 110 clusters since then.
This reduction means that only 27 million Nigerians are still digitally excluded, compared to 37 million in 2013.
Danbatta made these comments during a recent telecoms industry stakeholders forum in Yenagoa, Bayelsa state, where he was represented by the Head, Pre-Licensing at the Commission, Usman Mamman.
Access gaps refer to the cluster of communities or grouped areas in different parts of the country that are bereft of access to telecom services and till date, the NCC has reduced clusters of access gap by more than half.
Danbatta said, “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.
“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.”
“By 2022, we have reduced the clusters of access gaps to 97 from 207 in 2013. The number of Nigerians again have come down from 37 million in 2013 to 27 million as we speak. We achieved this by deploying, from 2009 to 2011, a total of 79 new base transceiver stations,” he said
According to Danbatta, between 2013 and 2018, 124 additional base transceiver stations were deployed in the telecom sector. Between 2019 and 2022, a total of 364 base transceiver stations were deployed.
He stated that the reduction of the access gap was a landmark achievement, but there are still 27 million Nigerians who lack access to telecoms services, and the Commission will continue to work towards providing them with services.
The EVC also mentioned some regulatory interventions to bridge the remaining 97 access gaps across the country, including the issuance of Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) Licences and the deployment of Fifth Generation (5G) networks.
