Telecommunications companies in Nigeria are engaging in a new and aggressive deployment of fibre networks into industrial areas, housing estates and business districts in many parts of Lagos, Ogun and Oyo states, in a bid to fully utilise large amounts of high-speed international bandwidth lying idle on the country’s coastline.
BusinessDay investigations reveal that telcos have been laying their cables in the high-brow Aja, Lekki, Victoria Island, Ikoyi, Marina and Broad Street axis and Snake Island areas, where they have made significant progress. The situation is the same in the Yaba Business District and some parts of Surulere.
More recently, the telcos have been piping from Ikeja through Alimosho, Abeokuta Expressway and Ota Road to Itohun, Ilogbo, Igbesa and Agbara. That axis houses two universities, Covenant and Bell, as well as several industries and housing estates, some of them occupied and others under construction. Some of the housing estates in this axis are Sun City, Sparklight , Honey Dew and OPIC.
The telcos are also piping the lines along the Apapa-Oshodi Expressway and inside Apapa. They are further piping from Iyana-Isolo, through Oke-Afa, Egbe Road, Akesan, Isheri-Olofin to Iba Town and the Badagry Expressway.
As telecoms operators continually build out these requisite fibre optic networks across the length and breadth of the nation, market observers say the pattern indicates they are targeting industrial clusters, housing estates, business districts and educational centres -areas with huge demand for bulk bandwidth capacity. BusinessDay further gathered that an estimated $2.94 billion (N487 billion) has been ploughed into the deployment of five submarine cable infrastructure.
Industry watchers expect the 10 terabits of bandwidth emanating from these internet infrastructures to resolve the long standing constraints of high capacity bandwidth required to drive data hungry services such as e-learning, e-commerce, telemedicine, e-government and e-banking, amongst others.
“Telecoms operators have not been able to move available international bandwidth capacity from the shores to the hinterland. The telecoms infrastructure required to make broadband services available in homes, hospitals and schools is gradually been built”, said Ejorvi Aror, chief executive officer, ipNX Nigeria Limited, in an interview.
Aror said this is the reason behind the company’s recent deployment of Fibre-To-The-Home (FTTH) in selected housing estates in Lagos Island, Ikoyi, Victoria Island, and Lekki. “We have realised that the cost of bandwidth was not the problem, but taking the capacity to the consumers”, he further added.
FTTH refers to a form of fibre optic cable technology that extends fibre optic cables from the telcos’ central office to a subscriber’s residence. MainOne, a technology company, is aggressively building out a fibre network connecting mmost parts of Lagos.
Market watchers say MainOne is perharps making necessary investment in view of its quest to become the sole broadband infrastructure provider in Lagos. BusinessDay gathered that the company, has over 300 kilometres of metro fibre ring around Lagos alone, with plans to expand it beyond those locations and cities across Nigeria. “We have worked with the Lagos state government, through the Yaba i-HQ project to connect institutions, schools, businesses, in and around the Yaba area”, said Paul Jaikaran, chief technical officer of MainOne, in an interview. Most telecoms operators understand the importance of metro fibre links, and are building one across the country.
Globacom, MTN, and Airtel already have metro fibre links that connect their subscribers for voice and data services. MTN’s fibre Optic network spans 5, 200 kilometres across Nigeria, whilst Globacom high speed optic fibre network spans more than 10, 000km covering almost the entire country. Investment in fibre rollout is expected to rise in coming years.
The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) is planning to license seven Infrastructure Companies (InfraCos) between now and the middle of next year, to deploy fibre optic cables infrastructure.
These firms will benefit from the NCC budget of about $1 billion National Broadband Plan (NBP), which will be used to cover black spots in the broadband rollout projects across Nigeria.
These InfraCos are expected to accelerate the deployment of a nationwide metropolitan fibre network on an open access, non-discriminatory, price regulated basis.
Report suggests MainOne Cables; Zinox Telecoms (an arm of Zinox Group); Trussnet Limited and IHS Consortium are competing to become the sole broadband InfraCo for the Lagos region in the proposed licensing by the NCC.
The four firms had submitted bids for the licence to the NCC about two months ago, according to reports. The commission is currently working on the evaluation modalities for the process that will eventually bring out the winner.
Lanre Ajayi, president, Association of Telecommunications Companies of Nigeria (ATCON), said the intention behind InfraCos model was laudable. He was however concerned about its implementation and called for a socio-economic impact study assessment before implementation.
“I have concerns about having just one InfraCos in a geo-political zone. It just creates a lot of uncertainty for existing and potential investors in the market.”
Ben Uzor