THE Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC, has approved two additional Infrastructure Company, Infraco, licences to deepen broadband penetration in the country. The Infracos are to provide the infrastructure backbone for effective broadband deployment across the country.

Tony Ojobo, director, Public Affairs of NCC in a statement said the two new Infraco licencees are Zinox Technology Limited for South East and Brinks Integrated Solutions Limited for North East,  bringing the number of companies licensed to four.

MainOne Cable Company Limited got its licenced to provide services in Lagos about a year ago while IHS was licenced to cover the North Central geopolitical zone including Abuja.

The Infraco licences are based on the NCC’s Open Access Model, OAM, in line with the National Broadband Plan (NBP) of (2013 – 2018).

By provisions of the NBP, Nigeria is expected to attain 30 percent broadband penetration by 2018.

As part of the initiative to achieve this, NCC, as the driver of this process, has so far licenced a number of companies to stimulate broadband penetration.

These include Bitflux Communications Limited (Bitflux) for 2.3 Ghz and MTN Nigeria for the 2.6 GHz licences. Other licences are in the pipeline in this process. As at December, 2017, Nigeria had attained 22% broadband penetration.

With the licensing of four Infracos: MainOne Cable, IHS, Zinox Technology and Brinks Solutions, there are three more licencees waiting for approval to bring total number to seven.

These are for South South, North West and South West.

– Feb. 8, 2018 @ 16:23 GMT |