National Mirror www.nationalmirroronline.net
Info Tech
Thursday, July 25, 2013
35
Tackling challenges of rural connectivity Worried by its inability to realise set targets in the earlier Strategic Management Plan designed to deepen telecoms access in rural areas across the country, the Universal Service Provision Fund says it has remodeled its execution strategy in the new SMP for effective rural connectivity, reports KUNLE AZEEZ.
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ne of the laudable initiatives embarked upon by the Nigerian Communications Commission is the establishment of a Universal Service Provision Fund, through the NCC Act 2003. The USPF is designed to promote widespread availability and usage of network services and application services throughout Nigeria by encouraging the installation of network facilities and the provision of network services, and application services to institutions and in unserved, underserved areas and groups within the community. Following its establishment, the board of USPF developed a five-year Strategic Management Plan (SMP) in 2007 to guide the activities of the USP secretariat for the next five years. It is instructive that the SMP 2007-2011, which was developed in consultation with industry stakeholders, specified five goals for providing universal access to voice and Internet services across Nigeria. However, appraising the key achievements of the SMP 2007-2011 indicated that USPF’s performance was below expectations, as most of the targets woven around its eight-point projects were not well implemented. The key projects include Community Communication centres, CCCs; the Accelerated Mobile Phone Expansion- Base Transceiver Station, AMPE-BTS; Accelerated Mobile Phone Expansion- Co-location Infrastructure Project, AMPE-CIP; Rural Backbone Initiative, RUBI; Backbone Infrastructure project, BTRAIN; School Access Project, SAP; Tertiary Institution Access Project, TiAP; and The E-Library Project. For the ECCs, designed to provide shared access to telephone and Internet services in rural areas, the targets was to build 291 CCCs across the six geo-political zone, but USPF achieved only 224. Also, while 490 BTS was targeted under AMPE-BTS, only 74 BTS were awarded and yet, only 62 of them are said to have been implemented. Under AMPE-CIP, while 150 CIPs were targeted, only 104 were achieved. A similar trend was witnessed under RUBI, where 109 RUBI initiatives were planned across senatorial zones in the country but were rolled out in only 18 local government areas in the country. BTRAIN also suffered a similar trend as only 500 kilometre of fibre were deployed, when 1000kilometre of fibre backbone infrastructure was the stated targets while on the SAP, where 1,858
A telecom mast
WHAT WE NEED TO DO IS TO LEVERAGE USPF TO INCREASE THE SPREAD AND SCOPE OF COMMUNICATION INFRASTRUCTURES ACROSS
NIGERIA AND PRIORITISE ROLL-OUT TO UNSERVED AND UNDER-SERVED AREAS AND THIS CAN ONLY BE ACHIEVED THROUGH PROPER PROJECT IMPLEMENTATION schools were targeted, the SAP scheme has only been rolled out in 766 government schools representing 41 per cent achievement of set targets. On the TiAP initiative, where 374 tertiary institutions were targeted to be beneficiaries of the programme, only 193 tertiary institutions across the country are said to have benefited so far while the E-Library scheme has been deployed to 74 libraries across the country. Speaking on the barriers to proper implementation of the SMP 2007-2011 at a recent forum orgainsed by USPF in Lagos to unveil its SMP 2013-2017, KPMG, the consulting firm to the fund, said, some projects had not recorded as much success as expected due to a combination of internal and external challenges faced by the USPF. According to partner, KPMG, Mr. Joseph Tegbe, while the programmes and project in the SMP 2007-2011 were well articulated, the USP Secretariat encountered some impediments in executing a number of the selected projects. Explaining, he said, “The SMP 20072011 appeared to have outlined too many programmes and projects for implemen-
tation considering the fact that the USP Secretariat has just been established and time was required to build and strengthen the capacity of the secretariat to implement the proposed progrrammes. “Also, projects were designed and defined using a “one size fits all” approach and thus intervention, in some cases, did not directly address the specific needs of the beneficiaries. The SMP also was not regularly reviewed on a defined, periodic basis to ensure USP initiatives were aligned with current reality.” Already, the USPF itself has conceded that it was not happy with its performance in meeting Nigeria’s earlier SMP. The fund has now set new targets in its current SMP 2013-2017,with assurances that the new targets would be met this time. USPF Secretary, Mr. Abdullahi Maikano, admitted the failure of the earlier SMP at a stakeholders’ forum held in Lagos last week to discuss the new operating model for the key area of project implementation from connectivity and access viewpoints and to ensure sustainability of such projects. He said the USPF would begin work
soon to facilitate the building of 5, 000 new telecoms base transceiver stations (BTS) in rural communities to provide service to undeserved and unserved areas of the country. This is in line with the new Strategic Management Plan (SMP) 2013-2017, where 1,000 BTS are to be built every year, beginning from this year over a period of five years. Other key targets include the plan to support the deployment of 15, 000 kilometres of fibre optic cables, laying an average of 3,000km every year; and the deployment of Internet Point of Presence (PoPs) in 25 clusters over five years, with an average of five per year under the Fund’s RUBI scheme. Maikano noted that the new SMP had been re-designed, following the review of the earlier SMP 2007-2011, which was fraught with a number of obstacles He disclosed that to achieve the new targets, USPF would, in the next two weeks, come up with requests for proposals from telecoms operators that would drive the infrastructure deployment, stressing that the fund would ensure that there is transparency in the bidding process. According to him, the new operating model adopted for the current SMP, which focuses on an integrated approach to project strategy and execution would lead to increased participation of industry operators; ensure implementation of well-planned and adaptable projects which suit a variety of ICT schemes; ensure availability of telecoms infrastructures in unserved and underserved area which provides a foundation for universal access, among others. The secretary reiterated that USPF was not happy about its performance in the earlier SMP. “For three days, at a retreat, we were looking at the number of things which we achieved in our first SMP and we were not happy about our performance but in the new plan, we would work with the operators to achieve all the goals.” Meanwhile, Maikano canvassed for partnership with telephone operators and all service providers to deliver on its statutory mandate of rapidly bringing broadband connectivity and access to rural un-served and under-served communities across Nigeria. In the same vein, Minister of Communication Technology, Mrs. Omobola Johnson, who was represented by the Director of Telecoms and Postal Services in the ministry, Mr. John Ayodele, called for serious collaboration between the USPF, the telecoms operators and other necessary stakeholders to ensure the current SMP records appreciable success. According to her, connectivity is still concentrated in urban, commercial centres as approximately 40 per cent of rural areas has no mobile coverage. On the solution, Johnson said: “What we need to do is to leverage USPF to increase the spread and scope of communication infrastructures across Nigeria and prioritise roll-out to un-served and under-served areas and this can only be achieved through proper project implementation.”