Broadband: FG targets 60,000 base stations by 2018

Minister of Communications Technology, Mrs. Omobola

The Federal Government has said it will encourage service providers to increase the number of telecommunications base stations in the country from the present 27,000 to 60,000 to meet the national target of five-fold increase in broadband penetration by 2018.

This will represent about 122 per cent growth level in the number of base stations in the country.

The Federal Government said it would encourage the telecommunications companies to realise this feat by harmonising taxes paid by them to minimise cases of multiple taxation.

The government also restated its commitment to reducing operating costs of operators and ensure easier access to right-of-way to build telecoms infrastructure.

The Minister of Communications Technology, Mrs. Omobola Johnson, said this in Lagos on Thursday at the presentation of her ministry’s scorecard to stakeholders at the Ministry of Communications Technology Roundtable.

She said the ministry remained committed to speeding up the building of communications infrastructure so that all of Nigeria would have access to good quality telecoms services and high-speed Internet.

The move, she noted, would ensure that Nigerians had affordable and reliable access to devices with the capacity to use them so that the benefits of Information and Communications Technology would be enjoyed by all.

“We hope to grow base stations from 27,000 to 60,000 by 2018. Significantly, more base stations needed to be deployed across the country to meet national target of a five-fold increase in broadband penetration by 2018,” Johnson said.