During World War II, there was need for ever faster fighter jets in order to out-manoeuvre the enemy jets and missiles. As the need for speed got more important in aircraft design, fighter pilots noticed strange effects as they approached the speed of sound: increased drag, reduced effectiveness of controls, etc. Many aircrafts that approached this limit lost control and crashed. This phenomenon was termed the sound barrier. The sound barrier captured the imagination of all concerned as a metaphysical phenomenon which destroys all that test it. It was the challenge of the earlier half of the 20th century to break this speed barrier. Breaking the sound barrier would require a new kind of thinking and would stretch the limits of the understanding of aerodynamics at that time. After World War II and at the onset of the Cold War, attempts in breaking the sound barrier yielded fruit as the Bell X-1 rocket plane broke the sound barrier in 1947.
Nigeria is faced with a similar situation in the modern age. It is the information age and information is power. Information is transmitted from one continent to another by light pulses tunneling through optical fibre cables. Governments around the world are deliberating on how to invest in national broadband infrastructure. There is fierce debate on what bandwidth is optimal for a given country and how much should be spent. While the British government debates what bandwidth is practical given limited funds and if the current minimum of 2Mbps for each household would be more practical than installing a higher bandwidth network when there is no clear demand, and the Australian government mull over the immediate savings of a 25Mbps and its more expensive update option versus a 100Mbps and its comparatively cheaper update to 1Gbps or more, African governments are not involved in the discussion.
Given the large population of Nigeria, there is a clear demand for better access to the internet for businesses and individuals. Unreliable access to the internet has limited the spread of mobile banking and e-commerce in the country. There is a shortfall in supply of bandwidth which the private sector is trying to meet. However, there are many obstacles to the growth and spread of broadband in Nigeria.
There has been some progress made in getting the private sector to invest in improving access, but the end-users cannot tell the difference. As at 2010, Nigeria had a total bandwidth of 4.76Tbps. This has grown to 10Tbps and is expected to reach 15Tbps by 2014. But even this is less than 90kbps per capita, not enough for the coming future concerns of the Information Age, like Big Data and “internet of things.”
In most other countries, investment in broadband has significant government involvement. Nigeria has taken a different tack by letting the private sector lead the way, which is apposite given government antecedents in running businesses. But, while private sector investment has seen telecommunications network coverage grow faster than ever before, we are yet to see commensurate growth in broadband access.
The available international bandwidth supplied by undersea fibre optic cables to our shores, while insufficient for the country at the moment, has grown tremendously with the increase of private investment in Information and Communications Technology (ICT) over the last decade. I believe encouraging the private sector would provide a better chance for Nigeria to evolve a sustainable means of achieving deeper broadband penetration. However, the private sector is limited in providing broadband at an affordable rate for consumers by the inefficiency in government bureaucracy in charge of administration and maintenance of public infrastructure.
There are many problems that the government is faced with in the country, so better access to the internet might not be seen as a priority. High unemployment rate which is increasing by the day, insecurity in the North and the Niger Delta, corruption in the management of public finance, and a dilapidated power sector are among a multitude of challenges the government is struggling to get a handle on. The government might also be reluctant to provide better internet infrastructure for fear that it might only result in an increase in internet fraud emanating from the country.
These are very important challenges that need to be addressed as they limit the ability to solve other more complex problems. For instance, while governments in other countries in Europe and Africa (like Kenya and Tanzania) invest in their network infrastructure, thereby lowering the cost for telecom providers and their customers, the funds for such investments have to be diverted to fighting militants and extremists. Terrorist attacks on the equipment belonging to telcos in the North of the country would discourage further investment in network infrastructure in the North and would reduce broadband penetration. In the absence of the security concerns and other competing investment priorities, where money is spent on network infrastructure, a huge amount would be lost to corruption. It also makes no sense to be bothered about better internet access when most consumers do not have reliable electricity to power their devices.
However, broadband availability still is important if the country is not to be left behind by the rest of the world. The fact that internet access is expensive and unreliable in the country has prevented Nigeria from taking advantage of business process outsourcing (BPO) in the developed world. India and the Philippines have been able to take advantage of outsourcing of low-skilled work, like customer care and call centres, which are too expensive to do in the developed world. The investment in the education sector in India, especially in Computer Science, has also seen higher skilled jobs in programming outsourced from Europe and the US to India. Some Eastern European countries also have talent in Software Engineering that take advantage of jobs outsourced from the UK and other rich Western European countries.
Cheaper and faster internet would also affect tremendously other aspects of sociopolitical and socioeconomic life in the country. Better connections and communication between businesses and campuses would yield innovations and knowledge transfer in those sectors. More companies would engage in eCommerce and the cashless policy would be better implemented, resulting in reduced use of roads to transfer physical cash between bank branches. Some people may be able to telecommute, enabling them to spend more time with their families and use the roads less thereby reducing traffic and car emissions. Improved access to internet in rural farm settlements could empower the farmers with information necessary to employ new farming methods and to know the best time to plant a given crop in order to take advantage of profitable market prices. Better internet access would also improve the citizens’ capacity to hold the government accountable through eGovernment and online activism. There are reports that social media was used by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in the last presidential elections to monitor the elections in real time and address reports of violence. In the healthcare sector, reliable internet can expand the prospects for home care and lessen need for admissions in public hospitals, thereby reducing the problem of overcrowding in these hospitals.
To harness the opportunities on offer from faster and cheaper internet, investment in backhaul infrastructure has to be gotten right. At the moment, microwave equipment is used for the network backbone of the telecoms companies to provide voice and data services. This method offers low bandwidth and unreliable communication, especially during bad weather. The existing copper cable network of the defunct NITEL cannot be relied on to deliver optimal broadband speeds as they are rusty, badly maintained and outdated. Optic fibre links are preferred for broadband as one hair-thin strand of a single-mode fibre can carry up to 5 million phone calls simultaneously and can transmit 20,000 times more data than the entire radio frequency spectrum put together. Fibre optic cables provide high and reliable bandwidth over long distances and are relatively cheap.
New fibre optic installations are usually deployed terrestrially in underground tunnels. This would require roads to be dug up when deployed to hubs located in commercial and residential areas; this is why state governments are reluctant to grant permits to service providers. To overcome this hindrance, some fibre optic cables are rolled out overhead along with the power lines. This is a commonsense solution which, nevertheless, leaves the fibre optic cables vulnerable to vandalism.
Another challenge is the scarcity of home-grown talent that can take advantage of improved broadband. The poor state of tertiary education in the country means any improvement in internet access would only be met with increased consumption of foreign-made content and applications. Jobs created would likely be taken up mostly by Kenyan and Indian immigrants, expatriates from Europe and foreign-trained Nigerians long before the average Nigerian graduate.
Addressing the complex challenges of improving internet speed in the country can only met by a multifarious approach. As much as we may all like to reduce direct government involvement, it is an essential piece of the puzzle. While allowing the private sector to build their own network backbones is a pragmatic means of getting the infrastructure – given the track record of the government investment in infrastructure – having several operators build their own networks separately introduces added inefficiencies in the system. Corruption in government must be addressed and state governments should be made to understand the impact of broadband on the local economy. The state governments – especially those managing the big cities like Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt – should be competing among themselves to have the best broadband infrastructure and attract more private investors, jobs and highly-skilled talent. The last mile connections – connecting the hubs to homes and offices – are the most expensive part of the network per capita and should be subsidised by the federal government, and state governments eager to drive prices down and be more competitive in the race for better broadband access.
Education has to be radically overhauled from the primary level to the tertiary level. Literacy and numeracy levels have to rise if Nigerian graduates would stand a chance of taking advantage of the highly-skilled jobs that would be provided by broadband. The Obama administration has enacted policies directed at encouraging enrolment of students into STEM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) and to halt the declining performance of American students in mathematics and science. This includes, among other measures, updating the curriculum and having people in the field of science and technology review the updates and suggest modifications; and awarding federal grants to states that improve teacher training in those subjects. Nigeria must do same, in addition to the adoption of other measures appropriate for the environment. Skilled professionals from around the world – both Nigerians and non-Nigerians – should be harnessed in running the technology industry and training local students in the field. It is not practical to reduce the dominance of foreign talent in the sector by enacting local-content laws.
Right now, broadband is seen as a luxury that only the rich should worry about. This is a mistaken perception that cannot stand the test of time. In this same country, phones were said to be only for the rich; but now almost everyone has a phone. The GSM revolution has made the mobile phone an essential part of everyday life. The applications of mobile telecommunications are widespread which now includes mobile payment, an important aspect of the reform in the agricultural sector which is used even by rural farmers. The need for affordable and reliable broadband goes beyond keeping up with the Joneses; it is an important aspect of life in the 21st century. The reforms in the power sector should go alongside efforts to improve broadband access as the two are mutually dependent. Breaking the barrier to better and cheaper broadband in the country is an important challenge of our time and would require a new way of doing things at all levels and a new way of thinking, just like breaking the sound barrier was in the 20th century.