The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), on Monday, said arrangement had been concluded to unveil new pricing cost for wholesale fix transmission service providers in the telecommunication industry.
The Commission expressed optimism that the new pricing will accelerate the broadband penetration through making transmission links competitive and affordable to end users across the country.
With the new pricing model, NCC said consumers will be able to afford data in the long run, adding that there is need for a level playing field for all operators in the segment.
Speaking at a stakeholders’ forum in Abuja, the Executive Vice Chairman of NCC, Prof. Umar Danbatta, said, research carried out by KPMG in conjunction with telecommunication operators revealed that the old wholesale fixed pricing has been excessively discriminatory and arbitrary among industry operators and users.
Danbatta also explained that investigation carried out by a project team constituted by NCC, which included MTN, Glo, Airtel, MainOne, Phase3Telecom and market operators, revealed that there was excessive pricing of fixed transmission link which has raised a lot of concern in the sector.
He said: “The study revealed that wholesale and retail customers in the transmission market capacity in the country were excessively high and not reflective of cost.
“Specific examples were situation in which bandwidth prices for route between Lagos and London was lower that between Lagos and Kano or Port Harcourt. Another issue that was identified was the issue of discriminatory prices of transmission links. It was observed that pricing was not based on cost, distance or any particular formula.”
According to him, statistical report by the International telecommunications Union (ITU), indicated that broadband penetration between 2014 and 2015 is still low, adding that modalities had been put in place to increase the penetration rate by 30 percent before 2018.
Credit: Thisday
