The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has approved spectrum for the trial of Fifth Generation (5G) services in the country and has also concluded negotiations on the counterpart funding to the Infrastructure Companies.

According to the Nigerian telecom industry regulator, this will support the deployment of the broadband infrastructure on which the smart services and other emerging technologies will be hosted.

The Executive Vice Chairman of NCC, Prof Umar Garba Danbatta, revealed this during the opening session of the First Digital Africa Week organized by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and hosted by the Nigerian telecom industry regulator, in Abuja yesterday.

“The NCC will continue to drive and implement policies, projects and programmes aimed at facilitating digital revolution and digital inclusion in Nigeria. In this regards, we have approved spectrum for the trial of 5G services in the country,’’ Danbatta said.

He said the NCC had set up a Broadband Implementation Monitoring Committee (BIMC) to monitor the full implementation of the Infrastructure Companies project within the four-year implementation plan.

Conscious of the pivotal role pervasive broadband penetration will play in actualizing deployment of Internet of Things (IoT) devices ad Smart Services in any economy, Danbatta said the NCC had developed a framework to facilitate the deployment of broadband infrastructure across Nigeria.

The NCC framework, he said, had led to the licensing of six infrastructure companies (Infracos) for North East, North West, South East, South West, South-South and Lagos.

The process for licensing a seventh Infraco for the North Central including the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, had been concluded and the licence ready for award very soon, he revealed.

The infracos will deploy metro and intercity fibre and broadband point of access with a minimum capacity of 10 gigabytes per second (10 Gbps) across the 774 Local Government Areas of Nigeria, he added.

“With the development of Smart Cities Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) by the ITU, it is imperative to have a pervasive and ubiquitous broadband infrastructure across all our towns and cities to achieve the objectives of making them Smart,” Danbatta said.

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He also told the experts that:

“Nigeria has not only achieved but exceeded the 30% penetration target set by the National Broadband Plan (NBP) (2013 – 2018) and at the end of June 2019, our broadband penetration stood at 33.31%.’’